


PURPLE

by lindenwaverly



Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcoholic Relapse, Angst, Dom/sub, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mind Control, Multi, Suicidal Thoughts, This is really extremely angsty and all about trauma, also - wlw! every fic needs em!, no 'on-screen' rape but frequent flashbacks to it that can be detailed, steve does enable tony's alcoholism in this but it's a weirdbad situation, the dom/sub is pietro and clint i wouldn't do that to steve and tony right now, they've got their own weird dynamics going on they don't need to add more to it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-27 06:49:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30118812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: Sometimes things just can't be fixed.Killgrave broke the Avengers. He broke Steve and Tony. Steve's just trying to claw something out of the mess.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Jessica Drew, Clint Barton/Pietro Maximoff, Sharon Carter/Bobbi Morse, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, background Wanda Maximoff/Janet Van Dyne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	1. Everything is Grey Here

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fic while the Incursions were still going on, and then kept fiddling with it for the next four/five years. I have no idea when this takes place in canon.  
> This fic grew out of me wondering what the deal with sex-pollen fics is - being forced to have sex with someone you have secret feelings for sounds absolutely shredding to me. I've been going back and forth on whether to post this, because it's not a pleasant fic by any means. I said it in the tags, but I'll say it again - the story bounces back from the present day to the past, but we never see the six avengers who get taken actually get assaulted. However, they do think about it, discuss it and have flashbacks to what happened.

Only two people recognized Steve on the journey to Seattle, which was surprising. The first was a woman in her seventies who sat next to him on the plane and only noticed him when she woke up towards the end of the flight.

“Are you…?”

He’d smiled patiently and nodded, trying to tilt his head to indicate she should be discreet. They were just about to touch down, and the shudder as the wheels hit concrete distracted the people who’d turned towards her raised voice.

“You were always my husbands’ hero,” she whispered. “Mine, too.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and he nearly made it out of his seat and away before she touched his arm.

“I heard about what happened,” she whispered – too loud, people were turning their heads and he tried to smile benignly and look like any other passenger entertaining an old dear – “and I’m so sorry. It sounds simply terrible.”

_Tony on his hands and knees, shivering and bruised, purple in the corner of his vision._

_“Like you hate him.”_

“Thank you,” he said again. His tone was too rude for Captain America, he should have been more polite – but then again, he wasn’t Captain America anymore. No one was, not until Sam or Bucky or whoever realised that he really meant it.

The second person who recognised him was the girl at the airport Walgreens, who seemed to be having some sort of stroke at the thought of selling Captain America cigarettes. He could see her begin to form the words to ask him for I.D., then falter and opt for wordlessly pushing the pack across the counter with one finger, as if faintly worried that it might be explosive. The kid who handed him the keys to the rental car barely looked at him or his licence, and then he was safely wrapped in the anonymous shell of a Subaru Something.

He called Sharon on the I-5 , because someone should know where he was. She picked up in the first few rings, ever the consummate professional. Even when they’d been dating she’d never stopped thinking of him as her job. Not like Natasha, with her unsettling habit of thinking about people as missions, but more like a long-suffering overqualified PA might think of their boss. Something to be managed.

“Steve?”

“Sharon. Hey.”

“Hey. What’s happening?” Always that tone in people’s voices now, which meant _What’s wrong?_ Or rather _I know what’s wrong, but I’m hoping you won’t talk about it._ On the other hand, if she was asking it meant that no one had noticed him being gone, so his leaving wouldn’t be that much of an issue. That was good. He had to remember that that was good.

“Nothing. Look, I’m … I’m going to be out of town for a while.”

“Ok. How long is a while? Do you need some back up?”

“No, no, this isn’t that kind of thing. It’s personal.”

“Ok,” she said, and her voice was so gentle it broke his heart.

“Look, Sharon – “ _I’m sorry. I wish we’d stayed together. This is probably goodbye and it’s such an inadequate ending._ “There’s going to be some stuff to sort out. I’m quitting the Avengers, effective immediately.”

“Quitting – are you sure we couldn’t make this an indefinite leave of absence? It will look better when you return if you were always planning to come back – “

“I left the shield behind.” There was a long silence, long enough that eventually he had to talk into it. “I know people won’t accept it at first, but eventually someone else will have to pick it up, Sam or Bucky or – “

“Oh my god Steve, can’t you see that no one blames you?”

“Fuck them.”

“Steve – “

“It’s not about blame, Sharon. I’m out. I’m done. I did my part.”

“No one’s saying that you didn’t. Steve. Please. No one else can carry that shield like you can – “

“Doesn’t the fact that I’m giving it up show you that _I_ can’t carry the shield like that anymore?”

There was another sound in the background, someone mumbling. He heard the muffled sound of Sharon putting her hand over the receiver, the low murmur of her voice.

“Are you with someone?”

“It’s – it’s nothing.”

“Is it Bobbi?”

“Steve.” Her voice was pleading. “I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s talk about you.”

“Let’s not,” he said, and hung up with a vicious satisfying flick. It was raining. The engine was thrumming. The whole world constantly making these irritating little sounds, liveable with when you were whole but unbearable now that he was rubbed raw.

The drive was meant to be two hours. It was closer to three when he pulled into the driveway. He stood outside, leaning against the car with his back to the house and smoked a cigarette to steady his nerve, then another, and was lighting up a third when he saw him sitting on the steps, glass of whiskey by his side.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” said Tony.

(then)

For Sharon, the whole thing had started like a fever dream.

“We are on red alert,” said Fury. “The five of us are, apart from the Avengers who were there when it happened, the only people who know about the events of this morning. There can be no leaks, nothing. Understand?”

Sharon nodded blankly. Her eyes were still fixed on the screen, where the six figures surrounded the smaller seventh, covering the exits with expertise as they made their way to the roof. She knew there was sound for the recording, but Nick wasn’t playing it. She wondered if that was for her benefit. Nick Fury had a heart, even if it was probably held in an unmarked box in a black site somewhere.

“I don’t understand,” said the taller woman with the curly hair – Mockingbird, something Morse, Sharon couldn’t remember all of them. “Surely the public needs to know that they’re a threat. If people approach these heroes like they usually do – “

“From what we can tell, he’s using them as personal bodyguards, not an offensive force,” said Hill. “When that changes, we’ll decide how to inform the public. _If_ that changes. He’s unpredictable – “

“He’s not,” said Sharon. “I mean yes, in broad strokes he’s unpredictable, but we know his MO. We all know what he did to Jessica Jones.”

There was a long silence, where Fury and Hill shared a significant look, and Romanoff stared off into the middle distance.

“Wait,” said Mockingbird. “I think there’s a few things I haven’t been filled in on. Who is this guy?”

“His name is Killgrave,” said Sharon, “his shtick is mind control, and his other, worse shtick is sexual assault, forced suicide and hideous self-mutilation. Psych profile says that he just does it because he finds it funny. Jones spent a long time with him when he had her under his control, she’ll be able to give us the best insights.”

“If we can get them away from him for twelve hours, we should be able to break the control,” said Fury. “Your mission is to – “

“All due respect, Director, but this is our strike team? The three of us?”

“Four,” said Hill, and frowned at Sharon. Well that was all right. Hill had never liked working with other women, especially those that disagreed with her.

“She has a point,” said Morse. “Particularly when facing off against Maximoff. I could find a bioagent that would take Danvers, Drew and Cap out of the fight, but I’m useless against her.”

“What do you suggest I do?” said Fury. “Send in Hyperion and Thor and hope that they don’t get within shouting distance of this asshole?”

“Send in Pietro Maximoff and rip his tongue out before he can utter a word,” said Sharon. Romanoff gave her an approving nod.

Fury grimaced. “AWOL. We’ve got concerns that he and Barton might be planning some kind of cowboy rescue.”

Morse twitched. Interesting.

“Any further complaints?” said Hill. She was looking directly at Sharon, like she was almost hoping for a reaction. She couldn’t remember exactly when Hill had started disliking her, and she couldn’t be fucked to tease out why right now.

“With your permission, I’d like to bring Falcon in on this team,” said Sharon. “He’s non-powered, so not a major threat if Killgrave gets him, but it would be good to have someone with that kind of manoeuvrability in the air.”

“I’ll call him in and debrief him,” said Fury. “Dismissed.”

“Well that was bullshit,” muttered Morse as they filed out into the hallway. “What a pep talk. ‘You’re all expendable because you have no powers.’ Cheers, Director.”

“That’s the job, Morse,” offered Romanoff coolly as she drifted past. Morse just rolled her eyes and elbowed her, and Romanoff actually winked back, shocking Sharon – the Black Widow, living legend, half flirting.

 _You’re just as good as her,_ said the voice in her head, and for once she decided to ignore the rational voice that popped up afterwards and pointed out that _no, you’re very, very good but you’re not as good as her, that’s just being realistic._

And she definitely needed to ignore the voice that said _you better be good, girl, because otherwise you’re walking to your death with your eyes wide open._

_Think about who you’re up against. Captain Marvel. Spiderwoman. The Scarlet Witch. The Wasp. Iron Man. Steve._

_Are you good enough? Are you strong enough? Are you sure?_

(now)

They sat in the vast marble gap between the open-plan kitchen and the open-plan living room, using Tony’s glass as an ash tray.

“I can’t believe you smoke,” said Tony.

“Have since I was twelve. Asthma cigarettes were a big thing in the thirties and forties.

“Ok, I can’t believe you _still_ smoke.”

 _I only started again recently,_ he didn’t say. “It was the first thing I wanted when I woke up from the ice, you know? I asked Hank for one and he looked so shocked that I guessed in the future people didn’t smoke or something. Then that first day, when Jarvis discreetly handed me that pile of money you gave me to buy clothes and told me things might be a lot more expensive than I remembered – I remember sneaking out of the mansion like a furtive teenager, wondering if maybe there was some black market I could buy them on.”

He felt Tony shake with laughter beside him. He didn’t look at him yet. Couldn’t look at him.

“And then I see someone smoking in a park, and they directed me to a shop, and I was so happy. You know when you haven’t had a cigarette in ages and as you’re about to have one you suddenly get worse. Like you’ve just become aware that you’re jittery. My hands must have been shaking. So I walk in, ask for a packet of cigarettes – just any cigarettes – and then guess what happened.”

“No.”

“Yep. They ask to see my I.D. And I’m standing there shaking, so close and so furious. And I just couldn’t understand what was happening, the clerk was looking at me like I was about to freak out, and the line behind me were all shuffling their feet and whispering. And eventually, eventually I say – “ he stopped and wheezed, he was laughing so hard it hurt, and Tony was laughing along – “I say, ‘Mister, don’t I look older than sixteen?’”

Tony collapsed into giggles behind him, holding his stomach. Steve snuck a look at him. He was thinner, but that was understandable. There was a lump through his vest where the bandages were still holding his side together.

“We should probably talk,” he said. “At some point.”

“Maybe,” said Tony. “We don’t have to. I quit the Avengers, you know. Moved out of New York.”

“I quit them too.”

“You should go back.”

“Maybe,” he said, toying with the neck of his beer bottle. He decided not to mention the fact that he intended this one to be permanent. Decided not to mention the nights he’d stood on the Brooklyn Bridge, looking over the edge at the cold dark water and wondering if he should really make it stick. He could pull that out later if he needed – _look, you and me, we’re the same now._

“You really don’t have to be here,” said Tony quietly. “Look, after the incursions – I know you didn’t expect to ever patch things up after that. And then you were a Nazi and I was a drunk ghost and I – I might have said some things.”

“Sorry,” said Steve. “You mostly said sorry.”

“What I mean is, you don’t have to be here just because of this. We damage each other. I damage you. And if I was a stronger, better man who actually cared about you I’d make you leave.”

“If I was a stronger, better man I’d convince you that it’s not just on you.”

“But you concede the point about damage.”

“I guess. I don’t think the damage is naturally us, though. I think us damaging each other is just a side effect of us torturing ourselves.”

“I think your _sentences_ are tortured,” said Tony. “Jesus, I think I wrote that on a textbook at fourteen.”

“You were at MIT at fourteen.”

“I was still _emo,_ Steve. You can write on college textbooks just as well.”

They sat in silence for a long time, watching the rain against the glass walls of Tony’s house. The house itself was completely soundproofed. Combined with the high ceilings and sparse furniture it gave it the feel of a rarely-visited modern art gallery, possibly somewhere with a lot of minor Miro’s. He wouldn’t have put it past Tony to have some great art stored in this house, the one that didn’t get blown up as much. Maybe he’d ask for the tour.

“How much do you remember?” he asked instead.

“All of it. But that’s not on you, Steve. He did different things to us. He liked to keep me clear headed.”

He inspected the neck of his bottle, rolling off the damp label in little tubes with his thumb. “You know, people keep telling me it’s not my fault like they expect me to think it’s my fault.”

“Well, we have _met_ you.”

He looked at the pines outside and wondered how old they were. Decades? Centuries? How long did trees live? The old impulse to think about whether this or that thing would have been there when he went into the ice flared briefly, and he gently set it aside.

“We should have been together,” he said. “That’s what I meant with torturing ourselves. Trying to convince ourselves that our relationship was something other than it was. Like that would somehow make it ok.”

“I know what the fuck you meant, Steve,” said Tony, and pushed himself away towards the bar.

Tony had made himself watch the video five times, to evaluate and fully understand the extent of his failure. His failure to protect his team. To do no harm. To be a leader. There were ways in which he had failed that he could not even adequately express in words, but he was sure that they would come to him with time.

They had been sitting in a morning meeting, and Killgrave had simply walked in and said “Nobody move, nobody speak, nobody harm me.”

What was terrifying – truly vertiginously horrifying – was that he could have done this at any time. All that time he was pissing around ordering free steaks and messing up Daredevil, he could have been doing this. Direct speech mind control, with no need for telepathy or spells – there had been no real way to protect against it. A perfect power. Curious – and more than a little annoying – that the Punisher had never gotten around to doing some actual good in the world and taking out _this_ prick.

“Get up,” Killgrave had said to Carol, and taken her seat. On the tape, he clicked at Thor and ordered him over to the door, to make sure they weren’t disturbed. Why hadn’t he taken Thor when he left? Too concerned about Asgardian retribution? Afraid that Loki, driven by whatever mad jealous brotherhood kept him obsessing over Thor, might come after him?

The recording was crackly, ripped as it was from SHIELD servers. Tony hadn’t wanted to actually ask for a copy so he’d hacked one instead, like the petulant child he was. The distortion separated the voice of Killgrave on the tape from the one he heard in his head.

_Like you love him._

On screen, Killgrave was putting his feet on the table, looking at the frozen Avengers.

“Speak when you’re spoken to,” he said, and Tony almost mouthed along, the words were so familiar. “I’ve been told to learn your secrets. All your secrets. I suppose that makes me the cackling villain – close shot, low lighting.” He leant forward, the sickening purple of his hands stretching across the white table. “Mr Cage, Mr Cage – no lovely Jessica to join us? That’s ok.”

Luke was straining against the control. The rage was boiling under his skin, his fingertips fluttering against Killgrave’s command not to move.

Killgrave smirked. The low quality on the tape turned it into just a flicker. Tony focused on that version, tried to ignore the memory of it’s sickening promise. His faceplate had been up. If it had been down, would he have been too much machine for Killgrave to play with? If it had been down, maybe he wouldn’t have -

“I’m sure I played with her enough for her to never forget me,” Killgrave said. “I wonder if she still thinks of me. I wonder if when you put your big hands on her she imagines mine instead. Do you get rough with her, when you fuck her? Big man like you, I bet you do. I was very caring when I was with her, you know. Gentle, even. I knew her, inside and out. Does she know you like that? Does she know every stray thought, ever secret, every passing fantasy? What’s your biggest secret, Mr Cage? What’s your biggest shame? _Tell me._ ”

“Sometimes, I – “ Luke was gritting his teeth, trying to resist. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. “Sometimes I wish I could have Danny and Jess. Sometimes I wish there was a way to have them both.”

“And why is that?”

“Because he’s beautiful,” said Luke. There had been a tear trickling down his cheek, invisible on the tape. “And I never let myself have those feelings, I put them away when I was younger and just forgot about them, but he walks around every wall I put up and he isn’t even aware that he’s doing it. Is that what you’re looking for, you sick son of a bitch?”

“Perfect,” said Killgrave. On the tape, he turned away from Luke and scanned the room. And Tony had been sitting there, silently begging not to be chosen. Hoping that Killgrave picked someone else to torture and humiliate because underneath the suit and the superheroism he was still the same selfish asshole he’d always been. “Thor – this should be interesting. What’s yours?”

Thor wasn’t fighting. Thor was standing dead-eyed, and that was the scariest thing to see – because Thor had never lain down and taken anything a day in his life.

“I met a man called Gorr,” said Thor. “He was butchering Gods from across the universe. He told me that people would be better off without gods. He was right. We are a cancer. We mine your beliefs, your hopes, your dreams in order to survive. I would not admit it to myself. But I am unworthy.”

Killgrave sniffed. “Existentially fascinating, but not really blackmail material. Who – oh, Mr Stark, you’re an interesting man. What’s your biggest secret?”

And there it was in the back of his throat, where it had always been. Not even that big of a fucking secret, in the end – not world-ending, not life-changing for anyone but him. Him and Steve. 

He could have picked anything. He had any number of secrets, better ones, ones Killgrave might actually have cared about. But instead his brain decided on the literal interpretation of Killgrave’s order. The secret that killed him.

 _Ha,_ post-fact Tony said to pre-fact Tony. _You’ve got no idea how literal that’s about to become._

“I’m in love with Steve Rogers,” said the Tony on the tape, and in a lifetime of damning sentences that one damned him most of all.


	2. Red Hands, Red Teeth

Tony had offered up the guest bedroom, but halfway through the night Steve gave up on sleeping and padded into the conservatory. There was a chaise longue stretched out, and he lay back on it and watched the rain fall on the ceiling above. Maybe this was where Tony had his therapy sessions, if he went to therapy. If Steve were to guess, he’d say there was probably a therapist kept on retainer who could go years without hearing from Tony and then get called in for nearly daily appointments in a frantic burst of Stark self-improvement. Or perhaps there was a robot therapist, some sort of AI who absorbed information on everything that happened in your life and then drew correlations between current behaviour and childhood traumas. That seemed like the kind of thing Tony would invent.

Steve’s own therapist appointment had not gone well.

Her name was Marla. She was probably great.

“I can’t talk about it,” he’d said as soon as he sat down.

He’d expected her to tell him that opening up was important, but she had simply stared him down and said, “Can you talk about why you can’t talk about it?”

“Because – because it didn’t just happen to me. There were others there, and I can’t talk about it – can’t “ _– violate – “_ can’t do that without his consent. Again.”

She’d nodded. “I see. Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“When you say you can’t talk about it, do you mean you can’t describe the – specific events that took place?” When he was silent, she went on. “A full, detail by detail recounting isn’t necessary. It helps for me to know the general shape of what happened, but – “

“But I imagine you’ve seen the videos.”

“I have not. I would not watch something like that whoever was in it, and definitely not when it came to one of my own clients. But I have seen the headlines, yes. What I mean to say is, we never need to talk about any specific event. We do need to talk about your thoughts about it, and your feelings, and that won’t always be comfortable. But being able to give a full, unflinching report of your trauma is not a necessary part of recovery.”

She had been so near to getting him, but it was that last word that broke him.

“I’m sorry,” he had said, standing up. “You are great at your job, you really are. But I can’t do this.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t deserve recovery.”

She had looked at him, and her eyes had pierced him with their kindness. “Could we not discuss that first?”

“No. Because you’ll try and convince me that I do deserve it. And eventually you might succeed.”

He’d held out his hand, and she’d shaken it. “You understand that without my assessment and treatment, you will not be permitted to re-join the Avengers.”

“I do.”

She had nodded, like she expected that answer. “Wherever your future takes you, Mr Rogers, I really hope that you’ll try again someday.”

He’d left her office quickly, before she could see the look on his face and tell that he was definitely never going to do that. So that had been therapy. He’d told himself he could sacrifice his mental health at the alter of Tony Stark’s wellbeing, and then forty-eight hours later he’d shown up at the man’s house.

There was a noise at the doorway to the conservatory. Tony stood there, wrapped in a sheet from the waist down, a diagonal stripe of darkness covering his face. In this air of unreality, Steve could appreciate his beauty. It was something you never quite forgot, looking at Tony Stark – how ethereally pretty he was. The azure eyes, the lean and perfect lines of his body, his full mouth and curling dark hair. For a moment, there was no guilt, no awful memories – Steve could just trace the lines of those hipbones with his eyes, watch the dark hair trail downwards over the washboard stomach.

In that moment, Tony let the sheet fall.

Steve had to look away. He had to look away. He couldn’t look away.

Tony’s footfall across the room was silent. Steve kept his eyes on those hips. He couldn’t look at Tony’s face. Tony was flaccid, his dick pale and soft against his dark hair. Steve was not. He had gotten so hard so quickly that it should have broken the laws of physics. His mouth was watering pathetically at the sight of Tony, silent and naked like judgement.

He opened his mouth and turned his head to the side, and Tony took it for the invitation it was. The head of his dick nudged against Steve’s lips and he moved forward and sucked, quiet and intense. They didn’t touch anywhere else. There was just Steve’s lips, working Tony as he slowly hardened, his tongue curling around the length and then flicking across the head. He wanted to absorb every taste, every movement, every soft hitch of breath from Tony, and preserve them in amber.

“Stop,” whispered Tony, and for a terrified moment Steve span out – Tony hadn’t wanted this, he’d just done it for Steve after that stupid comment earlier, he was terrified – but he was just settling over Steve’s body, straddling the chaise longue so he was at a better angle. They settled back in, Tony’s hips moving slightly now without any rhythm, just little jerks like he was trying not to. Steve could feel his stare. He kept his own eyes closed, just moved forward, giving himself completely to the task.

There was no warning when Tony came – just a gasp, and Steve’s mouth was flooded. He swallowed and pulled off, kissing the head. His own erection had now reached the point where it was almost painful, and he had just swallowed Tony’s come while completely in his right mind, and he still couldn’t open his eyes and look at him.

“Steve,” said Tony, and he forced his eyes open and looked up. Tony was watching him. His hand ghosted over Steve’s face and it was that, that simple touch, that almost broke him. He half-gasped, half-cried like the sound had been punched out of him by that hand against his cheek. Tony just kept looking at him. Slowly, slowly, he eased himself over Steve and off the chaise longue, and walked away. He kept _looking_ at him. Steve was pinned under that gaze like a butterfly.

He waited until he heard the door shut to Tony’s room, and then a few minutes longer until finally, finally he could move. Then he turned on his side and came over his white-knuckled fist.

(then)

Killgrave took the six Avengers down to basement level. There were no casualties because there was no need for any – weirdly off-brand, but perhaps he knew that he only had a limited window of time before someone turned up and kicked his ass. They entered a quinjet, which took them over New York and out into the Atlantic, heading south-east, possibly towards the Caribbean. Possibly being the operative word, because Killgrave had kidnapped Tony fucking Stark, which meant that eight minutes into their flight one of the most well-tracked, highly sophisticated pieces of technology just fucking disappeared with six Avengers inside it.

Sharon sipped her coffee and noticed it was hot. Weird, because he hadn’t gotten out of her chair for at least two hours. She started round wildly, and found Morse watching her, an amused expression on her face.

“Wondered when you were going to notice that.”

“SHEILD office jokester, are you?” Morse raised an eyebrow, and Sharon sighed and scrubbed her face. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just – “

“Awake at five in the morning and tracking your best friend. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you for the coffee.”

“I said don’t worry. Do you have anything?”

Sharon resisted the urge to put her head in her hands, because she was a professional adult. “I have looked at it from every angle. I have looked through every single camera or sensor on earth or above it that could have caught a glimpse of that plane. I have combed through Killgrave’s financial records so many times that I could probably fill out his tax forms from memory, if the man paid taxes. I’ve tried to extrapolate his journey and gone through the records for any large property bought or rented in the last two years to see if they were used by a purple-skinned man, and I’ve got nothing. You?”

Morse shrugged. “I’m only here to do the geek stuff.”

“This isn’t the geek stuff?”

“No, this is the spy stuff. I’m working on a counter-agent to Killgrave’s powers, and – for the powers of the others.”

“You can say Steve’s name around me, I won’t break.”

Morse fixed her with a long look. “Drink your coffee. Anyway, I think we might be looking at this from the wrong end.”

“Wrong end?”

“’I’ve been told to learn your secrets.’ That’s what Killgrave said.”

“That’s been bothering me too. Do you think he was told to grab these six Avengers? Do you think they’re actually with Killgrave at all?”

“Based on the very-fucking-little I know about Killgrave? Yes. The – selection process he put them through – he clearly found them amusing. I assumed the secrets were what he was sent to find out, and the abduction was just his way of making sure his exit was secured. But the feed to the conference room hadn’t been accessed by anyone else apart from us as far as we can tell – “

“Which is what I keep running into,” said Sharon. “If you’re getting blackmail secrets, surely you’d need the recording, right? Otherwise there’s no proof.”

Morse grimaced. “That’s my problem as well. I’m thinking typical supervillain BS reasoning – they just want to know the secrets to learn the Avenger’s weaknesses. If that’s the case, they might not be too happy with Killgrave taking the heroes they want to destroy for his own.”

“They probably couldn’t do it as effectively,” muttered Sharon. Steve’s face on the tape had been bloodless as Tony worked under the table, doing – doing what Killgrave had told him to do. When Steve had finished he had sobbed, just once. There had been smears of blood on the table underneath his hands. His fingernails had broken skin.

Morse placed a hand on her shoulder, and she resisted the urge to shake it off. This was a workplace, for fuck’s sake, there should be some professional boundaries.

“Come on, Carter. We’re going to go spar.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve hit a wall, and I’ve hit a wall, and the Black Widow is out there doing some freaky shit. Plus everyone says you’re brilliant, and I want to see if I can beat you into the mat”.

“You make some compelling points,” she said, rolling out the kinks in her spine. “Might shake my brain loose.”

Morse chuckled softly. “Oh, I’m sure your brains just fine.”

There was something else in that tone, something low and appreciative that almost made Sharon hover by the door. But Morse was already walking away, throwing a lazy hand over her shoulder to beckon her on.

Morse was a fierce opponent. Her style was more fluid than Sharon’s – somewhere between Romanoff’s spine-defying quickness and Sharon’s own military efficiency. But there was a hint of something else too, a viciousness that came with elbows and low blows and –

“Did you just try and fucking headbutt me?”

Morse grinned. “I was married to Hawkeye.”

“Oh, he taught you to fight dirty, huh?” She cracked her knuckles. “All right, time to show you some of the moves Nick taught me.”

“You’ve been holding back on me, Carter? Don’t like to use the same moves twice?” She spun into a high-kick, but Sharon caught her foot and held it, unseeing. Something was turning in her brain, something –

“I’m an idiot,” she said.

Morse raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t say that, but this is certainly an unusual approach to sparring.”

“I’m an idiot for thinking that accessing the feed was the only way whoever sent Killgrave could get the secrets. He _has_ them, he can just ask them again – “

“Same move twice,” said Morse, pulling her foot back down, “he _was_ just amusing himself in the conference room, it’s why he didn’t stick around and ask everyone, he was always going to pull those superheroes – “

“That’s why he pulled Steve when he didn’t even _ask_ him, because Steve has some of the highest level security clearance, Tony has a fuck-load of weaponry in his head – “

“Carol Danvers has been running Earth’s off-world defence system for years – “

“Jessica Drew has been a spy for pretty much every organisation on earth – “

“But why take the Witch and the Wasp?” said Sharon. “Wanda Maximoff knows a lot about magic, sure, but in terms of knowing official secrets – and Janet Van Dyne – we need to tell Fury – “

“Are you sure?”

Sharon snapped her head up. “Sure about what?”

“About telling Fury,” said Morse.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Morse’s gaze was frank, which Sharon appreciated. Her eyes were a little more grey than blue, now that Sharon looked properly, brightening sharply around the pupil as if they were zooming in on a target. Arresting.

“Because at the moment,” said Morse, “Fury has all our eggs in the find-the-superheroes basket. If he thinks it’s too late and the secrets are already out, he might give that up as a lost cause and send us looking for the buyer instead. And I don’t want to put you in a position where you’re forced between following orders and choosing your best friend.”

Sharon shut her eyes. Thought about Steve’s face on the tape.

Her best friend. Was that what Steve was to her? She knew that they would never be together again, even if she wasn’t sure he knew that.

“If that’s where the mission takes me, that’s where it takes me. But I don’t think Fury will pull us off finding Killgrave. First, because the fastest way to the buyer is through him. Secondly, because even without this shadowy background figure, six Avengers under the control of a sociopath is a major threat. I think at worst, he’ll split us up and I’m pretty sure I can convince him to let me stay on the rescue team.”

“All right,” said Morse, “I’m in.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “You don’t need bio-agent geek stuff when you’re tracking the flow of information. So, yeah. You go after Killgrave? I’m going with you.”

Sharon looked at her. Their colourings were so similar, Bobbi’s just a few shades darker than her. She wondered what they’d looked like, fighting together.

“Out of interest, what would you have done if I’d decided not to talk to Fury?”

“Backed your play.” She pulled her hair out of the neat ponytail and combed it with her hand. “I admire your my-mission-right-or-wrong thing, I do, but – let’s just say I’ve spent too much time around Natasha. And I’ve got my own reasons for really wanting this creep dead.”

“You know him?”

“No, but – “ Morse shrugged. “You read my file?”

“The parts of it relevant to this mission. _Personal Life_ is not relevant to this mission.”

“You’ve got quite the moral compass for a spy.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got quite the moral ambiguity for a superhero.” She leant against the ropes of the ring. “Is this bonding? Are we bonding?”

“If I say yes, you’re not going to get all Hill on me and tell me there’s no room for friendships at SHEILD, right?”

Sharon laughed. “No, I’m not quite that dead inside yet. All right, I’ll call Fury. You need five to catch your breath?”

“Nah.” Morse grinned. “Let’s roll.”

(now)

“Steve’s here,” said Tony into the vid-screen. “He’s… visiting me.”

The sub-space transmission was patchy, and the video glitched at the same moment that Carol’s brow furrowed as if she was transmitting her uncertainty to the technology around her.

“Is that wise, Tony?”

“Not all of us can run away to space. I mean I could, but – no.”

“Are you drinking?” Trust Carol to always cut to the heart of the matter. No bullshit, no euphemisms. He loved her so much. Thank God, Odin, every piece of shit deity they’d ever run into that Killgrave hadn’t fucked this one up for him as well.

“Yes, yes I am. And don’t give me shit, Carol. The only reason you’re not is because you’re in a different solar system. This is a sane response to an insane world.”

“I’m not going to give you shit, Tony.”

“Really?”

“You get to be a little bit of a mess right now. It’s justified.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Carol Danvers cutting someone some slack. It must be the end of days.”

She laughed. “How is everything otherwise? Outside your terrible decision making?”

“I don’t know. I quit the Avengers. So did Steve. Jess didn’t – “ He’d said it without thinking, and he saw the brief moment of despair cross Carol’s face. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

She dismissed it with a flick of her head. “We’ll get past it someday. If not together, then individually. This isn’t my first go-around on this. It isn’t hers either.”

“Different this time.”

“Yeah. Way, way suckier. But you will get through this.” Off screen, something exploded and she whipped round. “I gotta go. Don’t be a stranger, Tony.”

“I won’t,” he said, and flicked it off. His Bloody Mary sat next to him, untouched, and he took a vicious sip. He was an alcoholic, dammit, he was meant to be good at keeping himself comfortably fucked up.

He rubbed his face. He hadn’t been fucked up last night, either. He’d been having regular scotches for the best of the day before Steve arrived, sure, but he had long sobered up by the time that he’d walked into Steve’s room and just waved his dick in his best friend’s face like an oversexed zoo animal. And Steve had gone along with it, as a – what? An apology? _Sorry that I can’t love you back, sorry that even if I do love you I still don’t want you, sorry about all that rape._ Guilt, pity and shame – three words that summed up Steve’s relationship with Tony.

Except that Steve had been hard too. Had been hard from the second Tony walked into the room.

He padded into the kitchen in just a t-shirt and boxers. Modesty was faintly pointless now. He watched Steve come up the drive from his morning run as he put the coffee on and set about frying bacon. Cooking was not his strong point, but bacon was relatively hard to fuck up.

“Thanks,” said Steve, when he met him at the door with a glass of orange juice. He downed it, his long throat working, and Tony had to tear his eyes away to go back and check on his bacon. It was burning slightly around the edges. Ah well, it was artisanal charring.

“We should probably talk at some point,” said Steve, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Tony kept decanting his bacon onto two plates. “You keep saying that. I’m beginning to think that when you say at ‘some point’, you mean ‘right now’ but you’re too chickenshit to force confrontation.”

“All right. We should probably talk now.”

“What’s there to say?”

“If you don’t want to talk, why let me stay here?”

“Maybe I just need my dick sucked,” said Tony, and Steve’s fist on the marble cracked round the room like a gunshot.

Tony turned. Steve was breathing hard, watching him for a reaction. Tony licked his lips.

“Well,” he said, carefully switching off the stove, “this seems to be about right for a Cap-and-Iron-Man couples therapy sesh. First you demand we talk, then you yell at me when I don’t agree with you, and then you beat me up. Admittedly, the inevitable violence showed up a little behind schedule, but it had to make way for the new and exciting addition of sex into our traumatic relationship.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Steve. “I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

“Really? Because honestly, Steve, looking back at our long and beautiful friendship, every time we’ve had a disagreement that’s ended in violence I’ve been the one holding back, the one playing defence, the one who wants you to just calm down and talk. And you’re the one who ends up swinging to kill. So actually, yeah, you do want to hurt me. Maybe it’s subconscious, and maybe you’d never admit it to yourself. But whenever you get the opportunity to whack me around you _love_ it.”

At the start of his little speech, Steve had been looking at him. About halfway through he’d dropped his eyes to his fist, still frozen where it had landed on the counter. He was hovering on the edge of sobs, breath catching in his throat and a single tear, unnoticed, trailing down his cheek. For a moment that tear gave Tony a vicious twist of satisfaction, that _Steve_ was the one breaking with emotion while he remained calm for once. And then his mind caught up with him and _oh fuck, Steve was crying._

“Please don’t cry,” said Tony.

“Ok,” said Steve, still crying.

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“Do you hate me?”

It wasn’t the question he had meant to ask. He didn’t even know where it had come from.

“I think I established yesterday that I don’t hate you, Tony.”

He scrubbed his eyes. “Yeah, well. Whatever – else you feel, you’ve had no problem hating me in the past alongside it.”

“I’ve had a hell of a problem hating you,” said Steve softly.

“You’re a good liar, Captain America, but you’re not that good.”

“I’m not. Not lying, and not Captain America. Even when I was so angry at you that I couldn’t breathe, I spent most of that time mad at myself for not being able to hate you.”

“Heart-breaking. Look, if we’re going to talk about this, I need to be drunk.”

And it was the worst, the absolute worst thing in the world, that Steve just smiled and said “Deal me in.”


	3. Orange You Going To Let Me In?

(then)

“Get up,” said the annoying silver blur in Clint’s apartment. “Get up, Barton, before I throw you through a window.”

“Jesus _fuck_ no,” he moaned, trying to burrow down into the warmth of his couch. Then suddenly the couch was gone, and Clint was shivering on the fire escape. In just his boxers, in New York, in _January._ He shot an irritated look at Pietro and snarled.

“Pitiful,” said Pietro. “You persuaded me to bring you in on this. I was under the impression that I was gaining the help of a seasoned Avenger, not signing up to play nursemaid.”

“You could have just let me get up in my own time, Maximoff.”

“I could also have waited for the heat death of the universe. Now _where is my sister?”_

“All right, all right, I have a lead.” He stumbled through the window towards the coffee maker. _Please, please god,_ he though, _let me have set it the night before. I will give you my firstborn child if there is coffee in this pot, though I think you’re getting the worse end of that bargain._

“And that lead is?”

“SHEILD has him heading towards the Caribbean before he disappears. They’re doing some fancy-pants maths stuff to track his location.” Thank god, the coffee pot was still warm. Warm-ish. It would do. He lifted the jug to his mouth and drink straight from the spout. When he lowered it, he found Pietro staring at a spot just above his hipbone, a touch of a blush high on his cheekbones. Huh. _Interesting._

“Your personal habits are disgusting,” said Pietro, glancing quickly back at his face. “Go on.”

“See, I can’t do that numbers wizardry, but I had a hunch and I started making some calls. Turns out the Thieves Guild recently relocated to an island in the Caribbean, Dos Antida. Now, if I were a grade-A dirtbag who needed some help hiding from the Avengers, that’s where I’d go.”

“Then what’s the delay?”

“The _delay,_ you asshole, is called _sleeping._ Something that happens when you’re awake for thirty-six hours, sometimes without your permission. And the other delay is that I’m still hoping you’ll see sense and go join the SHIELD rescue mission.”

Pietro scowled. “Like they’d take me. I’m a dangerous mutant terrorist, remember?”

“You oversell yourself.” He was sure he left a hoodie around here, two days ago. Because he’d taken it off when he got home, and the odds of himself tidying it away were astronomically low. “You’re too bitchy to be dangerous.”

In a second, he was against a wall with the breath knocked out of him. Pietro’s eyes were an inch away from his, too close to differentiate. His vision was blurring – there was an arm across his neck, and it had only been there for a second, why did it feel like so much longer – and then he was dropped, and the pain was gone. He slumped back gasping. Pietro was at the other end of the kitchen, gripping onto the back of a chair like it was giving him strength.

“What the fuck,” said Clint. The effort of speaking turned into a hacking cough, and then suddenly Pietro was back next to him, holding a glass of water still vibrating from the speed of movement.

“Forgive me,” he muttered. His eyes were on the floor rather than on Clint’s face.

“You want to explain what that was about?”

“It was inexcusable. And stupid. I should go.”

“Wait,” said Clint, reaching for him, and impossibly Pietro stayed, his eyes fixed on the point where his sleeve was caught in Clint’s hand. “Wait. I get it, it’s your sister. It’s driving you half-mad with fear. But you have to remember that I’m trying to help you, ok buddy? I saw that video too. ”

Pietro still wasn’t looking at him. Clint tugged on his sleeve, softly but insistently, until Pietro was folded up next to him on the floor.

“Hey, I know we’re like – the very loosest definition of the word friends, but I have known you a long time. And I do, you know, care. About Wanda. Even about you, sometimes.”

“The last time I saw my sister, she said she never wanted to see me again.”

“Oh.”

Nothing could have bought Clint up short like that. Because Wanda and Pietro were a pair. They didn’t make sense without each other, so much of their personalities bound up in being strong in places where the other one was weak. Suddenly Pietro’s twitchiness, his instability, made a lot more sense. It was just like after the whole No More Mutants fiasco, when he’d gone off the rails. Without a Wanda to protect, Pietro’s waspishness, his aggression and sharp edges, didn’t have a point.

“She said I was a sociopath,” said Pietro. “And I don’t know if she was right.”

“You – you have feelings.”

“Do I? I care about my sister, but it has been pointed out to me that that’s in a slightly – possessive sense. Not in the way other people care about people. I try and feel the right things about her, about others, but I’m just not wired that way. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the reason Wanda married Vision. Because the only other male influence in her life was so emotionally broken that even a robot looked better.”

Clint held up a hand. “Ok, I don’t even know where to start with that narcissistic pile of bullshit.”

“I’m a sociopath. Narcissism is my default.”

“Ok, I – you are not a sociopath, ok? You are a very, very fucked up dude, to be sure, but sociopath? Nah. No. Nada. And the idea that Wanda married Vision because of you? Wow, way to undermine your sister’s agency. Let’s not forget she was around me and Cap for a long time, and a whole bunch of other male Avengers. She had plenty of other male influences in her life, and she chose Vision because she loved him. And yeah, that turned out to be a crappy choice but it was her choice. It’s not on you. Nothing she’s done has been on you. Except maybe the House of M, and that probably was only partially your fault. So yes, you’re an insufferable narcissist who makes terrible decisions, but let’s not forget that that describes half of the superhero community. Tony Stark? Hank Pym? Me?”

“Your decisions tend to be less catastrophic.”

“Was that – did you just pay me a compliment?”

Pietro rolled his eyes. “You’re too incompetent to unleash real damage.”

“Well that just warms the cockles of my heart.” He stood up and dusted himself off. “Come on. I need to shower and pack, and then we’re going to turn up with no plan at an island of thieves were one of us will inevitably start a barfight that turns into a superpowered beat down, and then we’re going to rescue your sister. And the other Avengers. Hey, quick question, have you ever fought Captain Marvel before? Because I’m pretty sure she’s going to break one of us.”

“You’re so inspiring,” said Pietro. “I cannot understand why Cap never accepted your request to be leader. Truly, you would have led us all merrily into battle.”

“Dick,” said Clint, but it was almost fond.

(now)

“All right,” said Tony, pouring with a practised hand over the row of shot glasses. “Here’s how this works. We each drink five shots, and then we play a game.”

“A game,” said Steve, looking dubiously at the rows of shots.

“A drinking game. It’s the fastest and most efficient way to get fucked up and reveal your secrets. We each take it in turn asking the other questions, and you have to answer honestly, and then you take a shot.”

“What happens when we run out?” Steve was holding up his first shot, sniffing it. He tossed it back efficiently, suppressing a grimace.

“Well, depending on how drunk we are, we pour some more. Or we beat each other up or cry into each other’s shoulders, depending on how the night’s going.”

“Or we have sex,” said Steve, “which I feel is kind of the point of this game.”

The silence that followed bought unpleasant self-reflection. He had meant for this to end in sex – had hoped that by the time they’d finished the bottle they’d be fucked up enough to fall into bed without any of the normal emotional hang-ups making it weird, and that somehow everything would be sorted out that way. Or if not sorted out, at least translated into a language that Tony understood.

“The purpose of the first five,” said Tony, “was so we’d be properly sauced by the time the real shit came out. You broke the rules, so you get a punishment shot.”

“Tony – “

“Uh uh uh. No talking.” He poured one, downed it himself, and then poured another to give to Steve. “Just drinking.”

Steve downed his, and then the next four shots from his original row. “I don’t think we should have sex, Tony.”

“I’m not drunk, so you’re breaking the rules again. Another punishment shot.”

“Fine,” said Steve, “but I get to add my own rule. And that’s no drunk sex.”

“So violence?”

“No drunk violence either,” said Steve. “I promise.”

“Great.” He pounded two more of his starter shots. “That just leaves the option of emotional real talk.”

“I thought that was the point of this.”

“Nominally.” He finished up his last two shots. “Ok, winghead, you go first.”

“Why me?”

“Because talking was your idea, so I assume you have an opening line.”

“All right,” said Steve. “How long have you been in love with me?”

It was a slap to the face. It really shouldn’t have been. Trust Steve to dispense with the niceties, to just drive straight into the heart of the problem. He should have gone first, should have set the tone. But that probably wouldn’t have helped anything, because Steve would have answered his opening question implacably and then dived straight in for the kill. He took another shot.

“Ah, I guess – I don’t know. It kind of crept up on me.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He shrugged. The truth was, he didn’t have an answer. Loving Steve felt like something that had been etched into his bones from birth. The first time he’d seen those blue eyes, standing around the table and checking the temperature of that ice-cold skin, he’d felt something in his stomach flip over. But it had been fine, even when Steve had awakened and joined the Avengers. He’d told himself it was nothing to worry about, that he was attracted to most of the team. Hank wasn’t his type, but Thor very literally had the body of a god, and Jan was cute and funny and seemed like she’d be a hell of a lay. And if he tended to think of Steve when he was jerking himself off, if he tended to come a little harder, feel a little more desperate on those occasions, that was just because Steve was beautiful. He was Tony Stark, irredeemable horndog, attracted to everyone.

Steve had been a perfect Avenger, and then slowly he’d become Tony’s best friend, in and out of the suit. Tony had flirted, of course, because he flirted with all his friends. Steve had flirted back, which had been a revelation – Captain America, living legend, answering Tony’s dirty jokes and innuendos with his own. It had made him feel special, getting to see this side of Steve that no one else saw. The human side, that liked to bitch about the government and make sly jokes about Hank and Jan’s awkward flirting. That liked sex, too, and Tony tried to convince himself that that wasn’t a part of their friendship. Tried to push away the small part of him that sat up whenever Steve flirted back and wondered if it wouldn’t be fun to find out just how far Steve’s new 21st-century ideals would go.

And then there had been a moment when he and Steve had been arguing – it had felt huge at the time, but now he couldn’t even remember what it was about – and Steve had looked at him with disappointment and turned away, like he couldn’t even bear to look at Tony. There had been a wild, desperate thing beating in his chest, crawling up his throat. _Look at me,_ he’d thought, _I will give anything for you to look at me like you usually do, like we’re friends. Please. Just look at me._

It had been another eight months before he’d put a name to that feeling, and a few more before he could think about it without wanting to cry.

“About ten years,” he said at last. “Yeah. A long time.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “But you’ve dated other people.”

“I kind of thought of it the same way I thought of the shrapnel. This chronic condition that I just had to learn to live around as best as I could. Though unlike the shrapnel, I never expected this one to kill me. And that was two questions, so drink twice.”

Steve rolled his eyes but took his shots with patience. “Your turn.”

“Do you even like men?” said Tony, because it wasn’t the most important question but it was the one that pissed him off the most. The idea that Steve had been there this whole time, that maybe Tony could have made his move before all the crap, back when Avengers Mansion was still their home and Steve still looked at him with something like respect.

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Tony. I like men.” He spoke very slowly, the way you spoke to dumb children and started horses.

“Elaborate.”

“Isn’t that another question?”

“It’s not a question. It’s a request for more information.”

“So a question.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Fine, I will drink twice. _Elaborate.”_

Steve shrugged. “I knew before the war. It – it wasn’t as hard for me as it was for some people, you know? To realise that I did. I was small and skinny, I liked art, I was effeminate and not that prone to violence. It was kind of expected. I think people were more surprised that I liked women just as much. And there was a scene, where you could – I was involved. It was harder in the army. Not because everyone else wasn’t doing it, but because they were surprised I was too. It was – “ He stroked his finger around the edge of his shot glass, making it sing. “That story I told you, about buying cigarettes? Part of the reason I was so keyed up is because I’d been waiting in the queue behind these two guys, mid-30’s. And while we were waiting, one of them took the other’s hand and kissed him on the cheek, right there in the middle of Manhattan. Like it was nothing. I couldn’t stop staring.” He finally looked up. There was something almost like amusement in the line of his lips. “Anymore ‘requests for information’?”

 _Why didn’t you tell me?_ But he couldn’t say that – not yet, anyway, maybe that could be shot five. So he just shook his head and drank his punishment.

“All right,” said Steve. “Why didn’t you ask whether I was in love with you?”

Tony nearly spat out his shot. “What?”

“I mean just now,” said Steve. “Though you can tell me why you didn’t ask before if you want to, of course.”

Tony decided to ignore the second part of that sentence. “Because I didn’t want to know the answer.”

“You know the answer.”

“I didn’t want to hear the answer, then.”

“Why.”

“That’s two questions.”

“Total honesty, Tony.” Steve was scowling. “Dodging doesn’t count as honesty. You’re cheating.”

“Trust Captain America to get uptight about the rules of a drinking game,” Tony muttered. “All right, all right. Because yeah, after – after a few things you’ve said, I’ve picked up on the fact that you do, in some form feel, ugh, _love_ for me. But I know there’s a _but_ in there somewhere. A _but I hate you too,_ or _but I’m not in love with you, _or a _but I wish I didn’t._ And I don’t want to hear it. You want to know why I never told you before? Because I’m self-aware, Steve. I know who I am. I know what I’m worth. And I’m not worth you.”

Steve scratched his nails along tabletop, staring intently at the groves he’d made. “You idolise me.”

“Yeah, me and half the earth’s population. No _shit_ do I idolise you, Steve. And before you go off on one about seeing you as a symbol, not a man, yada yada yada – I know you’re a man, Steve. I’m not blind to your faults, or unable to see your humanity or whatever. It is possible to know you, and see you for who you are, and still find you very inspiring.”

“How can you still think that.” Steve’s voice was close to a whisper. “After everything I’ve done, how can you still think that.”

Tony faltered. “That was Killgrave, not – “

“Not what I’m talking about. Well, not all of it. What you said before, about how whenever we fight I don’t hold back – that was true. I’ve treated you like shit, I’ve hurt you so many times, and you still idolise me. Why?”

He finally raised his eyes. It was the same look that he gave battle plans or scared Avengers newbies, that searing Captain America intensity that burnt through bullshit and lies. Tony couldn’t speak.

“I have this theory,” said Steve. “It’s not a new theory, and it’s not a clever one. You hate yourself, Tony, because in your head you’re fundamentally bad, and I’m fundamentally good, so it doesn’t matter what I do to you and what my reasons are, because it’s always somehow justified. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve been your way of self-flagellating for years.”

“Well gee, Cap, sorry if that’s been _hard_ on you.”

Steve’s voice was quiet, disappointed. “It’s a terrible way to think of someone, Tony.”

“Well, let’s fully examine this situation then, shall we?” Tony drank again. There was an edge of mania in his thoughts and his voice. He didn’t care. _Insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world._ “Let’s talk about how you think of me.”

“I thought that’s what you didn’t want to do,” growled Steve.

“Yeah, but we’ve had such a productive session talking about me, I think it’s only fair that you get a go. So let’s talk about you, Steve. Let’s talk about your _feeeelings._ ”

Steve laughed, a gunshot chuckle. “All right. So, to answer your concerns – yes, I love you. No, I don’t hate you. Yes, I’m in love with you. Yes, I wish I wasn’t.”

“Great. Just fucking great. So all that talk about how in my head I’m bad, and it’s messing me up – what about in your head, huh? What am I in your head, that makes you wish you weren’t in love with me?”

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re _dodging,_ Captain America, that’s _cheating – “_

“Because I can’t trust you!”

They were half out of their chairs now, separated by inches. Steve was panting, his breath hot against Tony’s face, his pupils blown. _Come at me, you son of a bitch,_ thought Tony, and didn’t know whether he wanted a punch or a kiss or what.

“You make me angry,” said Steve from between clenched teeth. “Every time I think that maybe things could be uncomplicated between us, you complicate them again. By _lying to me._ You’re a good man, Tony, but you’re so convinced that you’re bad that you keep making yourself do bad things. You want to know why we’re not together? Because you’ve been playing keepaway with our friendship for the last five years.”

Tony sat.

“You know,” he said, “I think I’ve lost count of how many questions we just did.”

“Three?” Steve picked up the bottle and poured some more. “I mean, we could go back over that conversation and count, but neither of us want that.”

“Let’s round it down.”

“It’s your turn.”

Tony took his shots and leaned back. Above him, the sun was reaching its high point. That was the shitty thing about day-drinking. Normally when you got drunk, you had an endpoint. At some point, everyone would have to go to sleep. Day-drinking like this, they could probably fit in another three emotional cataclysms before the sun went down.

“Tony?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Before you speak? Truly, you’re a changed man.”

He flipped him off. “Just for that, you’re getting the first question that comes to mind. Why didn’t you say anything before, about liking men?”

“Just because you know something you think is wrong, doesn’t mean you stop thinking it. It was just – habit, I guess. Keeping it quiet. Why did you – why did you do that, last night?”

“I don’t know. It felt like some kind of barrier we had to break, before we could talk properly.” The truth was, he couldn’t coherently put into words why he’d done it. It had been some itching in his brain, the same feeling he got when a scan looked fine but he knew he should run it again, when a random scientific paper landed on his desk and he didn’t know what use it could have but he knew he has to look at it again. There were few things in his head that he trusted, but that feeling was one of them. “Rain check on that one?”

“Fair.”

“And it was a hell of a blowjob, Steve.”

“Wasn’t sure it would be. It’s been a while.”

They smiled at each other – no, at the space next to each other. Eye contact was for fighting. Looking at each other like this, just now, would be far too dangerous. 

“Do you know what happened to the others? That’s not part of the game, Steve. I’m just curious.”

“You mean – Jess, and – “

“No, I mean Luke and Jessica. Someone must have told her what he said.”

“I think Luke did,” said Steve. “I haven’t seen them. I hope the work it out. It’s not like he loves her any less.”

“Do you she’ll let him have both?”

Steve shook his head. “I don’t think Luke will let himself. I saw Danny, briefly. He looked terrible.”

“Maybe it worked out. Maybe he looks terrible because he’s been up all night, canoodling – “

“Don’t. Ugh. I love Danny and Luke, but that’s not something I want to think about.”

Tony stood, straightened himself out. A decade of superheroing, and he still had terrible posture. “I’m going to walk towards you now, ok? But it’s not to have sex. It’s not.”

Steve didn’t reply, but his pose on the chair opened so Tony took that as invitation. He walked until their knees were pressed together – well, his knees against Steve’s shins, because there was still a height difference, and these chairs were tall. He moved forward and curled his arms around Steve, and then Steve shifted them, pulling Tony up until he was settled onto those huge thighs. He turned his face towards Steve, trying to press their lips together, to say everything he needed to say. But Steve turned away, and that was what he deserved.

“Don’t,” whispered Steve. “Don’t think what you’re thinking. I just don’t want this to be our first kiss, ok? I’m old fashioned.”

“Too old-fashioned to let me get to first base? We’re a bit beyond that.”

The answering laugh brushed against Tony’s hairline. They sat like that, curled against each other, breathing in and out in time.

“We should have just had sex,” Tony whispered. “This is so much worse.”

“No it’s not. It’s just harder.”

“I’ll show you harder,” he muttered, and clung on tight.


	4. Yellow-Bellied

Chapter 4: Yellow-Bellied

Steve lit another cigarette and stared at the three missed calls from Wanda. Inside, Tony was hunting for ingredients, claiming that he absolutely knew how to cook. Privately, Steve thought it was unlikely that Tony had ever cooked for himself before this morning. He knew that in Avenger’s mansion Tony had either eaten what Jarvis put out or just ignored his body’s need for food, except for occasional five am packs of ramen.

They’d held each other until Tony had shaken him off and gone into manic cooking mode, shooing him out of the kitchen. Steve wasn’t stupid. He didn’t remember everything he’d done under Killgrave’s influence, but he knew that Tony had good reason for not wanting to look at this face. His face. He remembered Tony trembling underneath him, his hands struggling for purchase on Steve’s shoulders. He remembered how it had felt to pin him down, to sink into him.

That was the knife that kept stabbing him. It had felt good.

 _Because Killgrave told you it would,_ whispered Marla-the-therapists voice in his head. But had he? He couldn’t remember. He knew that Killgrave had been speaking. He remembered being told to fuck Tony like he hated him. But had he been told to enjoy it? He didn’t know. Everything had felt covered in a fine red mist of rage, and he didn’t know who that came from.

He hit Wanda’s number, and she answered on the first ring.

“Steve? Steve, they said you were gone – I tried to reach you – “

“Wanda, hey. I just needed to take some time off. I’m safe, I’m with – I’m in Seattle. Where are you?”

“Pietro says I shouldn’t tell you.” Fuck. That was just what they needed, Pietro picking up his sister when she was vulnerable again, twisting her to his will – “But I’m in Crete.” The small rebellious note in her voice filled him with pride. “I’m recovering.”

“Is Pietro treating you well?”

“He’s my brother, captain.”

“I know, Wanda, it’s just that – “ He didn’t know how to explain to her that he trusted that Pietro had her best interests at heart, but he didn’t trust that Pietro knew what those were.

“Clint is here, if you were worried,” she said. He could hear the amused smile underneath it.

“Oh, Clint’s – there?”

“Yes. I think Pietro asked him to come. Things haven’t been easy between us for a while. This is a difficult place to try and rebuild from. But you’d know. How is Tony?”

“Tony is Tony.”

“I hear that. You could come to Crete, you know. The old kooky quartet. The boys squabble all the time, which keeps them busy, but it would be nice to have another adult around.”

“I’m not feeling terribly adult right now. Look, can I ask you a question? And you can ignore it if you want to.”

“Go ahead.”

“You and Jan – do you think you’ll ever be ok again?”

Wanda sighed. It made his heart ache, that much sadness in a single sound. “From what I hear, she and Hank have gone back to England together.”

“…Oh.”

“I think it’s a brave thing you’re doing, Steve. Tony’s brave too. I thought, after I got back from Crete – but I guess not. Same old Jan and Wanda story. One of us is always married.”

“But you’ve got Clint, right?”

“Captain, didn’t you hear me?” The amusement was back in her voice. “Pietro asked Clint here.”

It took a moment for the penny to drop. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“It’s not actually that much of a surprise for me. Don’t spread it around, by the way. They’re trying to be very discreet. They think I don’t know. My brother has always had a low opinion of my intelligence, and Clint is – well.”

“But – but they always hated each other.”

“They always argued, Captain. It’s not quite the same.”

“I guess,” he said. Now that he thought about it, he could kind of see it. Clint’s bumbling, klutzy air hid a mind much sharper than he liked people to know. If anyone could soothe Pietro, it was him. “Good for them.”

“I was thinking of suggesting to my brother that he form a team with Black Widow, Mockingbird and Spiderwoman.”

“Please, please don’t do that. Natasha would eat him for breakfast.”

“It would do wonders for his ego.”

He laughed. “Maybe. I’ve got to go, I think Tony is about to set off the fire alarm.”

“Good luck, Captain.”

“You too, Wanda.” He shut off, and walked back towards the house, and the billowing smoke that was beginning to surround Tony.

(then)

The island the Thieves Guild had chosen was a shithole. There was a hell of a lot of money washing around the Guild, but shockingly it was very hard to persuade a whole bunch of thieves to pool their resources for the greater good. So the port was little more than a warehouse with a snoring guard, the roads were full of potholes and the one hotel in town looked like someone had stuck a bar in a hurricane shelter. Speaking of bars, they were the only buildings that looked, if not cared for, at least adequately built.

“This place,” muttered Pietro. He was wearing a baseball cap with the legend _Gone Fishin’!_ in bright yellow letters across the brim, partially because Clint had told him his hair was too recognisable and partially because he just wanted to pay Pietro back for being a whiny bitch by making him look ridiculous. “This is your great plan for finding my sister.”

“Shut up. Yeah, it’s the rat-end of nowhere, but it’s also the best place to pick up tips on where various dirtbags have gone. Trust me, if the Purple Man ran his mouth to anyone? They’ll know.”

“Fine. So what’s the plan?”

“We’re going to go and have a beer, and scout around.”

“This is ridiculous – “

“ _This_ is intelligence work, Pietro. It’s actually an important part of any mission, it’s just one that you always thought you were too good for. We skulk around, we listen in, we probably get ourselves in trouble and a whole bunch of stuff will blow up but it will all end up ok and we’ll find a lead.”

Pietro stopped and raised an aristocratic eyebrow. It was possible, though unlikely, that the reason he’d developed a personality like _this_ was because bitchy looked so damn good on him.

“So let me get this straight, Barton. Your plan so far: step one, alcohol. Step two, undefined explosions. Step three, profit?”

Clint shrugged. “Always worked for me in the past. Come on. The Heavy Purse is our best bet.”

He pulled Pietro down through the cellar door into the bar and towards the counter, tuning out his whining. The problem with Pietro was that he literally didn’t have an off button – if he wasn’t running, he was talking, and if he wasn’t doing either then he was probably wrecking his life and the lives of everyone around them. If Clint was being honest with himself, that was why he’d decided to go with Pietro’s rescue mission rather than signing himself up for the SHIELD op. If he hadn’t been here, Pietro would have still been running around trying to find his sister, probably making the world a way worse place in the process. The best thing about being Clint Barton was that no one would even suspect he has good reasons behind his decisions. It would just look like old Hawkeye, playing at being a cowboy again, rushing off into the sunset with no plan.

Though to be fair, he didn’t have much of a plan. Not least because having a plan would involve thinking deeply about the situation that Jess and Wanda and Cap and all the others were in, and whenever he did he felt the well of anger inside him threaten to spill out. It was the dark places in his soul, the places that he never wanted to go again, threatening to reach up and drag him under. He would be no use to anyone if he went down that path.

He was scanning the bar while paying for their drinks with a clenched-teeth smile when next to him, Pietro suddenly went stiff as a board and muttered “Oh, shit.”

“Pietro!” called a very drunk, very happy, _very_ Cajun voice.

“You have got to be fucking with me,” muttered Clint, but no, there was Gambit, waving his arms around and rushing to envelope Pietro in a bear hug.

“I have missed you, _mon amour._ Oh, don’t get that look on your face – I am a married man now. Rogue! Come here and say hello to my friends.”

“Hello, friends,” said Rogue, eyeing Pietro and pronouncing _friends_ with the same voice people used to say _rats._

“Hey, guys,” said Clint. “Um, we’re kind of undercover right now – “

“Say no more,” said Rogue. “Remy, baby, down low, yeah?”

Remy waved his arms. “I am the king of Thieves Island. I know everyone in this place, yes? Including a couple of irredeemable dirtbags like you.” He grinned and winked at Pietro. “Come on, come over, I have a private room. Let’s see if there’s something the Ragin’ Cajun can help you with.”

Clint rubbed his nose and turned to Rogue. “Is he actually the – you know?”

“Yep,” she said, with an air of defeat. “He’s been trying to get everyone to refer to me as the Queen. Hey, you’ve been married, right? How quickly can you get a divorce in the state of New York?”

Oh. He hadn’t met Rogue many times before, but he _liked_ her.

When they were safely ensconced in Remy’s private room – with a bottle of much, much better liquor than the stuff they’d ordered before – Clint poured himself a heavy measure and tried to figure out how to explain this.

“Hey, so, we’re looking for information – “

“We know why you’re here,” said Remy. His voice had changed suddenly – gone was the happy drunken vigour, and in its place was a cold, sharp edge. Clint had spent most of his life around Natasha, so it took a lot to surprise him, but Remy was _good_. “You’re here about the Purple Man.”

“You’re not meant to know about that,” said Clint, weakly.

Remy shrugged. “Information travels faster on this side of the law. That’s why you’re here, yes? The Purple Man took off with a bunch of Avengers, and no one knows what he has planned for them.”

“That’s why we’re here as well,” said Rogue. “No one wants an out-of-control Scarlet Witch less than the X-Men.”

Pietro, who’d been sullenly leaning against the door, was suddenly in Rogue’s face. “That’s my _sister,_ you bitch, and I don’t care what you think about her – “

The whole situation had was on the verge of becoming exactly the kind of hero-vs-hero thing that he hated – Rogue was powering up for a swing, he could see it, and Pietro was vibrating with rage – and then suddenly Remy was between them, making nonsense noises like he was calming a horse. A single look at Rogue quelled her. Ah, marriage, built on unspoken understanding and trust. That must be what it was like to be with someone you’d known more than ten days. Then he was turning to Pietro, soothing him, running his hands over the speedster’s arms and across his cheek, almost like –

Rogue caught his eye and raised an eyebrow, smirking.

“No,” he said. “No, seriously? Is the X-Men even a super-team, or just an excuse for an orgy?”

Rogue snorted. “Please, like the Avengers are any better. The difference is that you guys get all into your feelings. We keep it loose and sexy.”

“The mutant way,” said Remy, raising his glass. Pietro was back on the other side of the room, studying the wall with some intensity.

“We are not that bad,” said Clint.

“Spiderwoman, Mockingbird, Black Widow,” said Pietro. “My _sister.”_

“Right, but – in our feelings? You two are married.”

“Sure,” shrugged Remy. “In a loose and sexy way. Very loose, Pietro, if you care to – “

“Could we please,” spat Pietro, “talk about _why we are here.”_

“Right.” Rogue pressed the wall, and it lit up with a map of the Caribbean. “Purple-nurple didn’t come through here, we’re pretty sure.”

“Because rapists on this island get the death penalty,” said Remy darkly.

“But there has been some chatter. Jim Butler, low level asshole, ran his mouth off a few days ago about how he was going to get to – “ She stopped. “About how he was going to get to sleep with the Scarlet Witch. A few minutes later his best friend, Torence Dodge, murdered him, then himself, in the Silk Whale.”

“Sounds like Killgrave,” said Clint. “Could he have been at the Silk when it happened, flying under your radar?”

“He wouldn’t risk leaving the kidnaped Avengers,” said Rogue. “And if they were here, we’d have heard about them. But his powers last twelve hours, which means if he told Torence to kill Jim if he spoke about it – “

“We can track Torence’s movements for those twelve hours, and it will lead us to him. You’re brilliant, you X-Men.”

Rogue grinned. “Well, I was an Avenger too, recently. And I try.”

“If we’re all quite done congratulating ourselves,” drawled Pietro, “could we get on with tracking Torrence?”

Remy grimaced. “That’s where we’re running into trouble.”

While they were distracted squabbling over tracking mechanisms and financial statements and the reliability of gossip, Clint slipped outside to call Natasha.

(now)

The first thing Steve did with his new body was break someone’s neck.

Technically, the fall killed the German spy. It’s a quibble – the fall was caused by Steve throwing him through a window. It was written off as an accidental death, because no one wanted to look at the new super soldier and wonder if maybe they’d picked the wrong man. Back in the forties, psych evaluations had been rudimentary at best. He’d told them he didn’t have hallucinations and had never been suicidal, lied about his sexuality, and was rubberstamped as mentally healthy.

Standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, wrapped in his towel, he wondered if he would still pass the psych-eval for taking the serum today. The serum magnified your personality as well, enlarged it. He didn’t lie when he was talking to Erskine or the psychologist, but he now knew that he’d been talking about the way he believed that strong men should be, without any consideration of what kind of man he actually was. Self-knowledge was bitter and sharp. That was something in favour of Tony – even if he over-calculated or under-calculated his faults, he still made an attempt to calculate them. Looking back on his life, Steve could see now that he’d always chalked up his mistakes to lapses in judgement, a momentary failure to be who he really was, rather than acknowledging that his true self might be – complicated.

Complicated, though a simpler word would have been _violent._ He didn’t relish violence for violence’s sake, but it was undeniable now that he had always enjoyed having the means to properly back up his anger when he hadn’t as a child. It had been one of his recurring fantasies, back in the forties – running into one of the guys who’d beat him up outside clubs for daring to look at them, accidentally stumbling onto them beating up another poor queer. He’d swoop in heroically, save the day. They’d regret the day they’d ever put their hands on someone in anger just because they thought they could get away with it, and because their disgust outweighed their sense of right and wrong.

He hung his head. So this was self-hatred. He thought he’d found it before, but he realised now he’d only been skimming the surface. How Tony managed to live down here all the time, he had no idea.

There was a tentative knock on the bathroom door. “Steve? I know dinner was a bit of a disaster, so I’ve ordered pizza.” 

He gripped the sink and tried to clamp down on the surge of anger that came from Tony’s nervous voice. _He’s treating you like you’re delicate,_ growled the mean, hard voice inside him that sounded like his father. He tuned that out, ignored it, focused on the reasonable voice that said _no, he’s nervous around you because you’re the face of his trauma._ It was uncomfortable to hear. It was rapidly becoming clear that he’d spent most of his life letting the angry voice drown out the one that told him harsh truths, and that possibly he should have stayed for a full appointment with Marla-the-Therapist.

“Steve?”

“Four seasons,” he called through the door.

There was a pause, a laugh. “Come on, man, I know your pizza order. I was just – “ _checking up on you,_ neither of them said.

He opened the door, towel wrapped around his waist. “Please tell me you ordered ginger ale as well. I’m going to need it.”

Tony didn’t respond. Tony was just – staring. Staring at Steve’s naked chest, and suddenly it all came crashing back. He had raped this man, and now he was just walking around in front of him practically naked.

“Oh god, Tony, I’m sorry, I – “ He ducked behind the door, his head poking out like a Three Stooges sketch as if that would make it better.

“It’s not – “ Tony swallowed. “It’s not that.”

“Oh.”

“You never took your clothes off,” said Tony. “Not all the way. I’m not having a flashback. You’ll know when I’m having a flash back.”

 _Will I?_ Because if there was one thing Tony was good at – or thought he was good at – it was hiding the feelings he thought made him weak.

“I’ll get dressed, and then I’ll come and join you.” He was saying one thing, but he knew his voice was promising something else, something he couldn’t put into words. Something about _protection_ and _trust._

Once dressed, he padded into the living room to find Tony licking cheese off his fingers, buried deep inside a mountain of pillows. He sat on the opposite couch, because they’d probably hit their limit for non-disastrous touching today. It wasn’t what he wanted, though. What he wanted was to crawl to Tony, to wrap him in his arms and press him gently into his chest. He wanted to tilt Tony’s head up with careful fingers, look into those deep blue eyes and say _stop lying to me. Let me in. I will,_ Tony would say, and then they’d lie there entwined and just kiss and kiss and kiss, achingly sweet. He wanted to strip Tony down, carefully as dressing a wound, and wrap his fingers around Tony’s cock and stroke him off gently, while Tony pressed his face into the crook of Steve’s neck and just shook. _It’s ok, baby,_ he’d say, _you can come now, it’s ok._ And Tony would gasp and come, painting Steve’s fingers, and Steve would lick them clean in front of him because there would never be any bit of Tony he didn’t want to taste.

But those were not things he got to have _(like you hate him)_ and so he sat on the opposite sofa. Tony pushes his pizza box over to him along with the bottle of ginger ale, and they ate in semi-companionable silence.

Or apparently not semi-companionable, because after two minutes Tony put down his slice of pizza and said “Stop it.”

Steve looked up. “Stop what?”

“Brooding. Thinking. You’re guilt-spiralling.”

“Yes,” said Steve, “but that doesn’t seem like an inappropriate reaction.”

Tony rubbed his face. He looked tired. Tony always looked tired, but not like this. The Tony of before would look tired but frenetic, like his body was exhausted but his mind was valiantly fighting it. The Tony of now looked like he was ready to give in to exhaustion – welcomed it, even. It was disconcerting to see a man who’d fought his entire life to stay awake, to have a little more time, look like he wanted to sleep forever.

“I just.” Tony was still rubbing his face, like he knew that when he stopped he might have to look up. “Do you know what I want for you?”

“What?”

“I want you to marry Sharon. Who loves you, and who you love. I want you two to have a big white wedding, and I’ll give you an over-extravagant gift that she’ll pressure you to accept – a house or something, I don’t know. I’ll give a speech at the reception, and it will be funny and heartfelt and tender and everyone will laugh and cry. Fury will be there and he’ll bitch about security but he’ll also shed a tear when he thinks no one’s looking. You and Sharon will go and have lots of little blonde babies and one of them will grow up to be Captain America and lead the next generation of Avengers.”

“And what do you do in this scenario?” He knew the answer, of course. Tony, for all of his claims to be a futurist, never imagined himself in the future. He laid in long term, Machiavellian plans because he didn’t consider the possibility that he’d be around long enough to fight them cleanly. There was a beat running through his head, a tune that went _maybe I’ll be dead by then_ on repeat, and Steve couldn’t say whether that was pessimistic realism or a form of hope. Perhaps it was all those years with a metal plate in his chest, trying to save the world before his next heart attack. But perhaps it wasn’t as simple as that. Those years had been the years Tony was happiest.

“Just keep being Tony,” was the answer he got.

Steve poured himself a glass of ginger ale. “I don’t want to marry Sharon.”

“Why not?”

“Well for one thing, she’s dating Bobbi Morse.”

“Really?”

“It makes sense. And for another thing, I only want to marry the person I love, and I think we’ve established that that’s not her.”

Tony laughed. “Steve, was that – was that a proposal?”

He fumbled, nearly spilling his drink. There had to be an elegant way to diffuse this situation. Something smooth and adult he could say that would neither break Tony’s heart nor lead to a hastily assembled Vegas wedding because Tony Stark couldn’t back out from a dare.

“I – no – I mean not – I – “ Ah yes, Captain America’s famous rhetorical gift on display right there.

Tony was still laughing. “I’m messing with you Cap. The look on your face.” He wiped his eyes theatrically, chuckling and turning his attention back to his pizza. It was pissing Steve off. Tony playing with him like that, using his emotions to pull the rug out from under him.

“I might,” he said, stubbornly. “Not right now, Tony, but I might.”

Tony wasn’t laughing any more. “What?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “There isn’t going to be anyone else I want to marry. Ever.”

“So it’s me or nothing, huh?” Tony was looking at him oddly. Steve set his jaw.

“Looks like.”

“Well what Captain America wants, Captain America gets.” Tony’s voice was oddly bitter. This was wrong, this was all wrong.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Steve. “I didn’t – I just meant – “

“Just meant what.” Tony leant forward. He was still holding a slice of pizza, munching on it after each acid sentence. “Just meant to let me know that I’m on a timetable, huh? I better shape up within the next five years, because Captain America needs to marry me.”

“Stop calling me that,” said Steve, “and let me explain.”

“No, let me explain.” Tony was gesturing with the pizza slice. A piece of pepperoni went flying off onto the floor. “You don’t get to do that, to dangle something like that over my head as some kind of _reward_ for fixing myself – “

“Who the fuck said anything about fixing?” He was not shouting, he was _not._ “You don’t get to put words in my mouth.”

“Then what did you – “

“I meant I’ll be here, ok? Whenever you’re – “ He held up a hand before Tony could get the words out. “ _If_ you’re ever ready. And can stop lying to me. I’m not going anywhere, ok? This is kind of it for me, I’m pretty sure.”

Tony was staring at the rug. He peeled the pepperoni off, rubbing at the mark with his shoe. “You can’t be serious.”

Steve took a deep breath. “Have been for about ten years.”

“Well, fuck,” said Tony. “Normally I think this is the point where I start laughing despairingly about how absolutely terrible everything is, but I think I used that all up earlier.”

“Maybe we’ll run out of things to shout about too.”

Tony did laugh then. “Nah, we’ll never run out of that.” He raised his head challengingly. “Would you?”

It took him a moment to place what Tony meant. “I think I just said I would.”

“No, I mean right now – would you?”

“How do you always back me into corners where I have to say something I know you’re going to get mad about?”

“That’s a no then.”

He sighed. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you think now is the right time to get married.”

Tony shrugged. “I could. As you said, I’m very good at lying to you.”

“Not that good,” said Steve, softly as he could.

Tony was rubbing his face again. “Could we just – could we just watch a movie? Something black and white with soothing witty banter.”

“ _Bringing Up Baby?”_

“Sure,” said Tony, and he busied himself lowering the lights and queuing up the movie while Steve just lay back and watched him.

And watched him.


	5. Green-Eyed Monster

(now)

“Again,” said Natasha, her voice comfortingly devoid of emotion. It felt good for Jess to hate something, and in that moment it was Natasha’s voice, and Natasha’s combat drills, and Natasha’s left-hook. She hadn’t let anyone else see it, but she’d been glad when the others from Killgrave’s Nightmare Island had all buggered off and left Avenger’s tower for her. This was her home, and she didn’t feel like trying to recalibrate anywhere else.

She hauled herself up. “Anyone ever told you about this great new concept called ‘going easy on someone?’”

“I believe someone mentioned it once,” Natasha mused. “They died not long after.”

Jess struck out, a palm up to the solar plexus, but Natasha countered it and went to sweep at her legs. Jess dodged just in time, rolling backwards into an impressive high-kick that took out Natasha’s left shoulder and shifting into an attack stance. That was a mistake, because it gave Natasha the opening she needed to hook a hand round Jess’s bicep and hurl her backwards, onto the matt. She pushed up to her feet, but Nat was on her, sending roundhouse kick after roundhouse until Jess could only defend.

She tapped out after five minutes later of playing catch up. “Ok, ok. Enough fighting.”

Natasha nodded calmly, like she hadn’t been destroying her a second ago. “Now we drink.”

“We do?”

“We do.” Natasha rummaged in her bag and produced a bottle of vodka with a hunting knife strapped to the side. Just in case you needed to get someone plastered while reminding them you could stab them. Jess, who didn’t consider herself a novice at all this spy stuff, still sometimes found herself impressed at the variety of situations Natasha was prepared for.

“Is this an attempt to make me Talk About It?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “From me? No, Jess, this is an attempt to make you feel better about your dismal performance. Also, Logan’s out of town and I need someone to drink with.”

They sat on the matts, drinking in companionable silence. This never would have been allowed when Steve was here, but now Steve was gone, and Tony too, and there was a strange feeling all around, like the parents were out of town and now the kids could break the rules a little. Were they even still Avengers? Tony had said they should keep it going, but neither he nor Steve had arranged for anyone to take over, and all the clear leaders were out of town.

“Who do you think is in charge?” she asked.

Natasha shrugged. “No idea. We’ll have to pick someone eventually.”

“Could be you. You’ve led the Avengers.”

“Hmm. I think not. I am not inspiring.”

“Inspiring. Well, that rules me out.”

“You wouldn’t be a bad choice,” said Natasha. She shrugged nonchalantly, but Jess was no fool.

“Uh uh. No way. I’m not going in for the leadership contests. I don’t want to know how badly I’d be beaten.”

“There are leadership contests?” There was Danny Rand, taping up his knuckles as he wandered in. “Hey ladies, I came in here to spar but I see the matts are being put to more productive use.”

“Come drink with us,” said Nat, and Danny ambled over and flopped onto the matt, shaking his head like a dog coming up for air. Jess smiled. She’d always liked Danny – he just had this charming, affable air around him, like a less klutzy Clint. And he also had the abs of a god. Her libido, that cunning skittering creature, perked up for the first time in weeks at Danny’s shirtless form.

“I don’t drink,” he said, grinning. “I’m always down for a gossip, though. And you’re right, we need to pick someone to be in charge before Spiderman starts taking control.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” said Nat, baring her teeth.

“Probably not,” said Danny, “but stranger things have happened. I kind of assumed it would be Thor.”

“Apparently he’s never wanted to lead the Avengers,” said Jess. “He’s always jetting off to Asgard or somewhere anyway. Maybe Luke?”

Danny’s shoulders stiffened. _Fuck._ In the midst of her own nightmare, she’d almost forgotten the way it had all started – that normal, banal, awful day.

“Sorry, Danny.”

He waved her off. “It’s nothing. Things are – weird, but fine, you know? Like, this-is-the-new-normal weird, not urgent-crisis weird.”

“I hear that,” said Jess. Carol had come to her door, an hour before she left. _I just thought I should tell you – This isn’t about you._ Those sad eyes. Carol hadn’t even been able to look at her face. _When I come back we can try and make this better._ Well, fuck Carol. She could make it better on her own.

“Hey.” Danny’s touch was gossamer light. “Whatever happened, it probably isn’t the bottles fault.”

She looked down, at the feather strips she’d peeled off the bottle’s label. “Yeah, well, it can’t fight back.”

“But I can,” said Natasha. “And if you break that bottle, I’ll demonstrate. Now, who wants to hear some scandalous news about Mockingbird and Agent 13?”

(then)

There were many, many things that Clint had done wrong in his life which might have led up to the karmic retribution of this moment. Kate would probably know them. He would text her and ask, except that he was stuck inside an extremely small box with Pietro Maximoff.

“This – “

“If you say _this is all your fault,”_ muttered Clint, “I will actually stick an arrow in you. Hard.”

“I was _going_ to say that this is very uncomfortable.” There was a dark blush high on Pietro’s cheeks, and it made him look younger somehow, a little more like the kid who’d followed Magneto around with nary a thought. They were curled up into each other, Clint’s back plastered along Pietro’s front. The plan had been to skulk around the warehouse where Dodge ran his smuggling business from, see if they could find any records of mysterious shipments that had occurred in the twelve hours before Butler’s murder.

“He still needs _stuff_ ,” had been Rogue’s explanation. “We might not be able to track the Avengers, but he’ll be ordering food to wherever he’s taken them, and he’ll probably want someone shady to bring in the shipments so nobody catches sight of a stray superhero. If you think he’s in the Caribbean, Dos Antida is the logical place to run supplies through.”

“Do you think he’ll be ordering them back every twelve hours to keep them under control?” Clint said, but Rogue shook her head.

“It’s possible, but I don’t think he’d need to. The promise of money would be enough to keep people coming back, and Butler and Dodge weren’t known for having any kind of moral qualms that might make them think twice about working with someone like him.”

Pietro’s face had been dark and unreadable. “He promised more than money,” he’d said, and the silence had rung.

“One problem,” Clint said, as they poured over the maps. “Who’s to say that the original transaction was recorded? Killgrave could have ordered them not to write anything down.”

“We’ve considered that,” said Remy. “According to Jones, Killgrave’s powers don’t work over the phone, so he’d have had to be here in person to do that. And like I said, nobody’s reported seeing him or the six missing Avengers on the island. Without specific orders to the contrary, it’s likely Dodge and Butler would have left something in their notes – it’s just good business sense to keep accurate files. But just in case, me and Rogue will scout along the docks and ask people about any ships arriving in that twelve-hour window. You and Pietro take the warehouse.”

“Sounds good,” past-Clint had said, which made present-Clint want to go back and punch him in the face. He should have insisted on working with Rogue. It would have been great being stuck in a box with her. He didn’t want to be the kind of asshole who lusted after other men’s wives, but he got the feeling that Remy wouldn’t mind and – well. She had curves for days. Taking sex out of the picture all together, she’d still be much more comfortable to be pressed against than Pietro’s bony ass.

Though technically it was his ass pressed against Pietro, with their legs tangled together in front of him. He’d shifted his quiver between his knees so that Pietro didn’t accidentally get impaled on their trip, and he was regretting that more with every minute.

The sensible thing to do would have been to call Natasha and tell her about the new development, but Pietro had looked like he had every intention of speeding off without Clint if they didn’t leave right the fuck now. And now they were fucked, and absolutely nobody was going to find them, and to top it all off they were going to die spooning.

“I didn’t realise they were going to nail the box shut,” said Pietro.

Clint resisted the urge to tilt his head back and groan, mostly because that would have left his head nuzzling into Pietro’s shoulder. “What the fuck did you think they did on cargo ships? Just left all the lids to slide off every time the boat rolled?”

“Forgive me for not having your vast knowledge of cargo ships – “

“It’s just basic fucking sense – “

“We needed to avoid being seen, and we needed to get on board this ship – “

“There were so, so many other ways to do that – “

“You heard them say this was the last place Dodge had been before – “

“I also heard them say _eight hour round trip,_ which means that one way is four hours that I’m going to have to spend in your spectacular company – “

“Four hours which I will spend astonished by the fact that you can do basic math – “

Something inside Clint broke. “Ok, you know what? That’s it, you little shit.” He tried to shift round, sliding back into position almost instantly because the angle was all wrong but fuck it, he wasn’t giving up that easily. He reached back and grabbed a fistful of Pietro’s collar. “Everything that has gone right in this mission has gone right because of me, and everything that’s gone wrong has gone wrong because of you. I have put my career, my safety and my life on the fucking line for your too-cool-for-SHIELD plan, and I’ve done it while being a paragon of fucking patience. And what have I got for it? I’ve been assaulted. I’ve had to watch you nearly fight Rogue. I’ve had to learn so much more about your sex life than I ever cared to, and to put the cherry on the turdtacular cake, I am now _stuck in a crate with you_.”

“Clint,” burbled Pietro, jerking his neck away so Clint lost his grip on the collar, but he wasn’t done. He twisted round more firmly and caught hold of Pietro’s neck this time, a grip just tight enough to be punishing. It forced his spine at an unnatural angle and pushed him more firmly into Pietro’s lap, but he’d take any amount of back ache for the chance to finish his fucking point.

“You are normally a dysfunctional mess, but right now you have to be breaking some kind of world record for least amount of shit together. How the fuck did you think you could ever be leader of the Avengers, man? Oh, I get it – you never did. All those times you acted out against Cap, that was just because Magneto wasn’t around, wasn’t it? Jesus, I’m a human trash-fire but you and your daddy issues are something else. You just need a big strong man to put you back in your place every time you misbehave, don’t you? You might kick out against the restraints, but without someone telling you what to do you just fall apart.”

“Please – “ Pietro was struggling up against him. Clint twisted further, shoved him back against the side of the crate with the hand on his neck and used his other hand to hold down those hips that tried to buck him off.

“Well listen up, boy,” he said, leaning closer. “I ain’t Cap, and I sure as hell ain’t your Daddy. I’m not going to just give you a nice stern talking to every time you behave like a little bitch. You want to be bratty? I’ll treat you like a brat. Next time you mouth off to me I’m going to put you over my damn knee and _spank_ you.”

Pietro whined, high and desperate, and it was in that moment that Clint realised two things –

  * He had maybe said some questionable things there and
  * The movement of Pietro’s hips that he’d thought was an attempt to break the hold was – something else.



“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered. “You are fifty shades of fucked up.”

“Stop,” said Pietro. His eyes were sliding guiltily, flicking occasionally back to Clint’s face with something so much worse and more complex than shame.

“Oh my god, is this – is this doing it for you?”

Pietro was almost wine-dark with blushes now. “I’m not – I’m not _trying_ to.”

Clint let go of his neck and turned around, trying to slide away. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to slide to unless he wanted to get rid of his legs, which meant that he was still pressed against Pietro’s dick.

Against Pietro’s extremely hard dick.

The silence that Clint had so desperately wanted now felt awful. There was only him and his whirring thoughts, and Pietro’s heavy breaths on the back of his neck.

“I don’t like being like this,” said Pietro suddenly. “I don’t like being – pathetic.”

“Right,” said Clint. “And by pathetic, you mean, um, excited?” _Excited. Good job there, Barton. Got any more euphemisms you want to drag up from seventh grade sex ed?_ “Just – I don’t know. Imagine your dad and Xavier doing it, and it’ll go away.”

“That doesn’t work on me.”

“What – ew, _ew._ Jesus – “

“No, you cretin, I meant – there’s certain fun side effects to my mutant physiology to do with. Um. Blood flow.”

“Blood flow?”

“Certain situations are longer lasting.” Clint couldn’t see Pietro’s face, but the words sounded forced between gritted teeth.

“How long lasting?”

“Four hours, you said this journey was?” said Pietro, with airy, casual bitterness. “We’re going to have company for most of the trip.”

“Right, right, cool, yeah.” Not cool, not cool under any circumstances, but his mouth had apparently decided to just give up on forming logical sentences.

They lapsed into silence again, and Clint tried to focus on the wood grain in front of him and not the hitch in Pietro’s breath.

“Doesn’t that start to hurt?” he asked after two minutes of trying to imagine how he’d phrase this in a mission report.

“It’s excruciating!” said Pietro brightly. “Thanks for bringing it up!”

Clint twisted his head to look at him. Pietro’s breathing was laboured, his arms wrapped around his chest. There was a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. His eyes were glassy and dark and horrified.

“Ok,” said Clint. “Ok, look, I’m going to hate myself for what I’m about to say. But. We kind of need you at your best when we get out of this crate, buddy. Spending four hours in agony won’t help. You may need to just get rid of the problem.”

“ _Please_ tell me you’re just asking me to cut my dick off.” Pietro’s tone was completely flat.

“Jesus, no, just – look, I’ve lived in shared rooms for a lot of my life, all right? Being in proximity to someone jerking it isn’t exactly new to me. Just – burp the worm and get it over with.”

“Great,” said Pietro. “Fantastic idea. Just wonderful for me. I’ve already revealed to you what a deeply disturbed pervert I am, so why not go the whole hog? What could be more fun than sitting here masturbating to your completely uninterested back? How thrillingly humiliating. Though I suppose we’ve already established that that’s a plus for me.”

His voice sounded like it was strung over barbed wire, and – fuck, was that a tear threading down his cheek? “Pietro, when you said you were pathetic, did you mean – were you talking about what you like?”

“What I _like._ What a nice way of phrasing it.”

“Because you know that’s ok, right? If that’s what gets you off, having someone – talk to you like that. Boss you around. Be a little mean. That’s just a kink, ok? There’s nothing pathetic about that.”

“You said it yourself.” Pietro’s mouth was drawn in a tight, stubborn line. “You said I was a dysfunctional mess.”

“Yeah, in your life-life, not your sex life. Jesus, I wouldn’t – “ He stopped, and took stock of the situation. Pietro’s fingers, gripping his arms so tight they had to be leaving bruises. The astonishing shock of his hair, and that translucent skin that never let him hide a feeling. His shivering, lithe body. “Ok,” he said, calmer. “Ok. Here is what we’re going to do. Quicksilver, I am in charge of this mission now, do you understand me?”

Pietro still wasn’t looking at him. He pressed backwards, dropped his voice into a growl. “I said do you fucking understand me?”

“Yes,” said Pietro, the sound forced out.

“Look at me when I speak to you,” he snapped, and that got Pietro’s eyes on him, heavy and desperate to look away. But he wouldn’t, and that kind of power – no, that kind of _trust –_ hurt something deep inside Clint.

“Ok,” he said, keeping his voice as level as possible. He was getting hard himself now, and it would probably be best for Pietro not to see that. “You have created a problem for the mission. I am going to tell you how to fix it. You are going to follow my instructions and follow them good. You waste my time, you answer back, you sass me, and I will make you regret it, are we clear?”

Pietro’s throat bobbed, and Clint put his hand over it. Not as hard as before, just enough to remind about his strength.

“I said are we clear, Pietro?”

“Yes.” It came out as a whisper.

“Good. Now rub your cock. Through your clothes. I’ll let you stroke yourself when I’m good and ready.”

Pietro let one of those pale hands fall, squeezing his crotch – tighter than Clint would have liked, almost to the point of pain. He rubbed back and forth, pushing his hips up into it with small thrusts like he wasn’t sure he was allowed. He wasn’t allowed, Clint decided, and moved his other hand down to hold him in place. Pietro moaned at that and dropped his head down, hair brushing Clint’s wrist.

“Good,” Clint whispered. “Yeah, good boy, just like that. Guess you can follow instructions when they get your dick hard, huh? Pity Cap didn’t know this trick.” Pietro grimaced. “Oh. You wanted him to, didn’t you?” A nod. “That what you imagine? Captain America, in the library, telling you to strip? Kneel on the ground and rub one out while you tell him exactly what you did wrong in training that day? Maybe letting you hump his leg like the horny little bitch you are?” He got a full groan at that. “All right, get your cock out. I want to see.”

Pietro scrambled to obey. They were still in civvies, thank fuck, because getting out of that uniform would have been a logistical nightmare. Instead he just unzipped and – Jesus. Pietro’s cock was beautiful, slim and curved and just longer than normal. It was also so hard it could have cut diamonds.

“Christ,” Clint muttered. “All right. Get a hand on there. Nice and slow. No superspeed, ok? I’ve got four hours with you, I’m going to take my fucking time.”

Pietro obeyed. His face was frozen now. He was looking at Clint, still with that heavy desperate edge. God, all he wanted to do was slide his cock between those perfect parted lips. If they weren’t in this crate, on this stupid boat, he would have stood up and dragged his fingers through that unreal hair and just fucked Pietro’s face.

“Is this what you did with Remy?” he whispered. Pietro’s strokes were so slow as to be actually torturous. Clint’s own cock throbbed in sympathy.

“Yes. Yes, and – “ Pietro broke off to whimper, his face contorting.

“And?”

“And more.”

“I can guess _and more._ I ask you a question, I want a full answer. Did you blow him?” Pietro nodded. “Did you like it?” Another nod. “Answer me in words. I won’t tell you again.”

“Yes. Yes I liked it.”

“I bet you did. Getting down on your knees for the king. Letting him fuck your mouth. I bet he didn’t even let you get yourself off while you did it. Bet he made you wait till he was done. Bet he came all over your beautiful face.”

Pietro’s eyes fluttered closed. “Yes. He did.”

“Good. Bet that’s a picture, you with come dripping down your jaw. Not so fucking proud now. Did he fuck you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes, god, I – “

“Did you get loud? I bet you did. Bet you moan like a slut when you get fucked, right?”

“Yes.” Pietro’s hand on his cock had sped up. His voice was agonised. “When I was allowed to be loud.”

“He gagged you?”

“No, he just – he said I had to be quiet or he’d stop. Wouldn’t let me put a hand over my mouth or bite a pillow or – I just had to force myself to be silent while he fucked me.”

“Jesus.” This was going terribly. It had been – an academic exercise, or a mission necessity, and now he knew. He could picture in harrowing detail exactly the face that Pietro would make as he got fucked, the little whimpers he wouldn’t quite be able to hold inside. “I bet you loved that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Clint twisted further, bought his mouth close to Pietro’s ear. “You know what I wish? I wish you’d been in front, and me behind you when we scrambled in here. You know why?”

“N-no.”

He dragged the hand that had been holding down Pietro’s hip to his cock, pressing his thumb against the head until Pietro shuddered. “Because I wouldn’t just be jerking you off, pretty boy. I’d have made you get my fingers real wet and then fucked you with them. None of that gentle coddling shit. I’d have gotten rough with you. Made you fuck yourself back on my hand. Made you beg for it.”

“Clint, please – “

He pushed his head forward, licked at the parts of Pietro’s skin he could reach. “You going to come for me, Quicksilver?”

“Yes, yes I – “

“You come on my hand, you’re going to lick it clean.”

Pietro threw back his head and gasped and then he was coming in long, hard spurts that looked like they hurt. He was beautiful, so fucking beautiful. His hair looked like it was made of starlight. And then he raised Clint’s hand to those obscene lips and licked it clean. Clint couldn’t help himself. He lifted his hand away from Pietro’s neck and shoved it down his own pants – thank fuck for ambidexterity – and he was coming too, his other hand pressed against Pietro’s mouth. And then he lifted his own come-covered hand from his shorts, and Pietro licked that clean too.

And then there was the moment of realisation, which awkwardly seemed to arrive just as Pietro was halfway through chasing a particularly stubborn spot of jizz on Clint’s thumb. Clint snatched his hand away and wiped it on the wall of the crate, his spine protesting as he shifted back into his original position facing forwards. Neither of them needed to see the other’s face.

“Well,” said Pietro. “Excellent leadership. Now instead of my awkward boner for distraction, we’ve got – oh, three hours and thirty minutes to sit in silence and contemplate what we’ve just done.”

“No afterglow, huh?”

“We’re in a crate, Barton.”

They settled back into silence. Kate would probably not look well at this. If he told her about it. Which he was not going to do.

“So, do you think your dad and Xavier have had sex then?” he said cheerfully, and cackled at Pietro’s answering groan.

(then)

“So,” said Sam, sidling up to Sharon as she leant over the edge of the ship. “Do we actually have a plan?”

She bit back the sting of irritation. “You were in the same briefing I was, Sam.” It was just her, Sam and Bobbi – Natasha and Hill had been sent to work things from the other end. Bobbi had been right about Fury’s priorities.

“Yeah, but what I heard was a lot of _let’s wait around and see what we find._ Not, you know, orders.”

She resisted the urge to throw herself over the railings. Fury had insisted on them taking a boat rather than a plane to draw less attention, which meant that the journey had taken considerably more time than she would have liked. Time in which Steve could have been enduring any number of agonies that didn’t bear thinking about. “All we have from Hawkeye is the names of two dead assholes and the fact that they’re working with some X-Men.”

“Kind of seems like we should be talking to those X-Men, then.”

“Well, SHIELD hasn’t always been the best at maintaining relationships with them.”

“So you think Fury’s having us run reconnaissance until we can work out how to approach them?”

“Possibly.”

“There’s another option, of course. And that’s that Fury is playing some five-dimensional chess with us.”

“Isn’t that always the way?”

Sam hung his arm over the edge of the railing and examined the island before them. From far away, it had been beautiful. Now they were closer, she could see the ramshackle collapse of the buildings. “I think, if I had to guess what’s going on in his head – and who can say they can do that, really – I would say that he wants to stall us long enough for Maximoff and Barton to find Killgrave and go in so he can use them as a distraction for us.”

It was what she had been suspecting, even if she didn’t let herself think it. “You think he wants to offer them up as sacrificial lambs.”

“I know. Cold, even for Fury. You think you should tell Morse?”

The right thing to do for the mission was to keep it silent. Bobbi would undoubtedly not like knowing her ex-husband was being used as a pawn, especially after he’d bought them this intel. It would distract her, shift her focus. Sharon should compartmentalise. It was what Hill would do, and she was – irritatingly enough – the better agent.

But. _Quite the moral compass you have for a spy._ And who wanted to be Hill, anyway?

“I’ll tell her,” she said. “I should see how she’s getting on with that bioagent.”

Sam just nodded. That was the great thing about him – he always made sure to see both sides. If she’d told him to keep it quiet, he’d have nodded too.

“Hey,” she said, “I know I don’t really need to ask this, but once this is over – you’ll be around for Steve, right?”

“Of course I will. Though there are other people who could be there for him too, you know.”

“If I – he’ll need to heal. Every time we find each other when one of us is damaged, we fall back together.”

“And you don’t want to do that now?”

She shut her eyes against the old, familiar ache. “If me and him were going to happen, we’d have happened by now.”

“Well,” said Sam. “I can’t pretend it makes me happy to hear that.”

“You think I’m abandoning him?”

“No, Jesus. You’re not wired to give up on people, Carter. I mean that you’ve always been good to Steve, and I guess I hoped, someday – but. You know.”

“What?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t think he’s always been good for you.”

She thought of that line in her SHIELD file – _Misoportal pills to be applied vaginally for cramps and bleeding._ It had taken her a long time to understand that. Longer still to work out the implications.

“Do you think he would have named you godfather?”

“Damn, Carter.” Sam grimaced. “Yes, probably. Does that sound arrogant? I suppose under normal circumstances it would have been Tony, but those weren’t exactly normal times.”

“I don’t know who I’d have chosen,” she said. “This may surprise you, but I don’t actually have a lot of friends.”

His hand on her shoulder was warm. “More than you think.”

“Yeah.” She looked at him, his rueful smile. “Maybe I do.”

“You know I don’t belong to Steve, right? Even if you’re not together, I’m still around.”

She wrapped her arm around him, a sideways hug. “I should go find Bobbi. Do a job.”

“Yeah, have fun. Hey, there’s another friend you have.”

She looked down at the deck, trying to keep the small smile off her face. “Maybe.”

She found Bobbi in the lab, rotating a 3-D rendering of a molecule on a computer. “Hey Carter,” she called. “Come look at this.”

Sharon leant over her shoulder. Bobbi smelt of antiseptic and citrus. Her dirty-blonde hair was darker at the roots, almost chestnut.

“What am I looking at?”

“See, we know that Killgrave doesn’t use any pheromones to affect his victims, and we know it’s not telepathy either. But that left me wondering what he _does_ use, because unlike most of SHIELD I don’t take ‘it’s superpowers, who knows?’ as an explanation. And we know it’s not just related to his voice, because recordings of him and phone calls don’t hold the same power. Have you heard of scopolamine?”

“That drug that turns people into zombies? Yeah.”

“Great, great. It’s actually the basis for all the most-fun mind control drugs out there. But at a base level, scopolamine works by blocking acetycholine – a type of neurotransmitter. Acetycholine does a whole bunch of stuff, but the bit we’re interested in here is its effect on arousal, attention and plasticity. Without it, we can’t maintain alertness or retain memories. When you damage it – with scopolamine – you can’t remember who you are or why you shouldn’t do certain things.”

“But Jones was alert for periods under Killgrave.”

“Correct. Killgrave’s clearly doing something more to his victims. So I pulled up a bunch of his victims hospital records and found exactly what I’d suspected – reduced acetycholine levels. But I also found something interesting.” Morse clicked through a few more screens. “See, acetycholine also controls the movement of certain skeletal muscles, mostly those movements we can’t control consciously. If you look at these readings here, these are a bunch of other neurotransmitters that work between the brain and the muscles. They’re lowered in all the victims. Killgrave is interrupting the connection between the brain and the body.”

“I don’t understand.”

“All right.” Bobbi pushed her hair back over her ears. “Jump.”

Sharon dutifully jumped, and Bobbi grinned.

“Damn, thought I’d have to persuade you more. All right, when you did that, did you tell your gastrocnemius muscle to contract before you tensed your palantaris muscle?”

“I genuinely haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. We don’t think in terms of which individual muscle we have to tense and contract whenever we make a movement, because we’ve got all these neurotransmitters to do it for us unconsciously. Killgrave is getting in the way of these, which amounts to him taking control of his victim’s bodies so they can only release these chemicals in the specific way he allows. There’s more to it, of course – that wouldn’t explain the compulsion to tell the truth, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on with the serotonin levels and some opioid receptors that I definitely want to examine when we get back. But the point is that I think the acetycholine levels are the key. If we can increase ancetycholine in the brain, we can break control.” She clicked through a few more screens. “Of course, this doesn’t tell us exactly how to prevent control.”

“We couldn’t just pre-emptively raise our own ancetycholine levels?”

“It wouldn’t be terribly good for us, and I can’t promise it would actually have any effect – he seems to persuade the body to produce its own inhibitors for however much they have. Sorry, it’s still noise-cancelling headphones for us.”

“You are genuinely, without a doubt, the most brilliant human being I’ve ever met,” said Sharon. God, was this what hope felt like? “I have no idea why people call Tony Stark a genius when you’re out here walking around.”

Bobbi shrugged, her smile a little shy, a little teasing. “Well, I tend not to be such a flashy prick, so fewer people notice. I should have something synthesized by the end of the day. Was this what you came down here for?”

Ah, fuck. “Not exactly. Look, what I’m about to say isn’t something I know for sure.” And she laid out all the points she and Sam had gone over. Bobbi didn’t look away, didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. When Sharon had finished, she just laid her head back and sighed.

“Yeah, that’s about what I was expecting. Fuck. If Fury ever has a mysterious stroke, just know that I did it.”

“I’ll hold back the inquiry to give you enough time to escape,” Sharon promised. “You all right?”

“No. No I am absolutely not all right. You know what the worst thing is?”

“Hit me.”

“If Clint knew this – and I bet he suspects, because he’s not half as dumb as he says he is – he’d still be going in there. Because he’s a good man.”

“I know.”

“Fuck.” Bobbi jumped up, punched the wall. “Fuck. I’m sorry. Give me two minutes to get my head back in the game, and then you’ll have your resident scientist back. I knew this. I just – “

“Wasn’t thinking about it,” Sharon finished. “Been there.”

“Can I ask you a question? And feel free to tell me if this is out of line. You and Cap – do you still love him?”

Sharon tipped her head to the side. “I think – I loved Steve for so long that I’ll always have a space for him. But I don’t know if that space is called love. So much of our relationship was tied up in my job, in us working together, in me working on him. I don’t think – sometimes I think that’s that what I was doing when we dated.”

“What?”

“Handling him in a different way. I don’t mean that I was fucking him for the mission. I just don’t think that a lot of our relationship was about me. And there’s – stuff happened to us. Bad stuff that was no one’s fault, but it can never be what it was, you know?”

“I do.” Bobbi was just watching her. “That’s pretty much the exact way I feel about Clint. Bad stuff. You read the rest of my file?”

Sharon shook her head. “I don’t need to know anything you don’t want to tell you.”

Bobbi shrugged. “I don’t – want to _tell_ you, because talking about real shit that happened to me has never been my strong point. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to know. I’d like you to be the kind of person who knew those things about me. If you wanted to be that person.”

“I do,” she promised. This all felt much more significant than just promising to read a file. Well, spies were never known for their great emotional range.

Bobbi shrugged. “Well, that’s enough self-pity. I’ll get on with that bioagent. What about you?”

“I’m going to find a way to politely tell Fury that I think his orders are wrong. Want to swap jobs?”

“Nah, I’m good.” She moved back to the computer. “Let me know how it goes.”

“I will. And – “ Sharon paused by the door. Should she do this? “I don’t know if you read my file, but there’s a line on page 27 that might interest you. As a biologist. When you’ve got time.”

“I’ll read it,” said Bobbi, eyes solemn. “I promise.”

“Great,” said Sharon, and then walked away into what would probably be one of the worst phone calls of her life.

(now)

_Dear Tony_

_I needed to get this out there, so I wrote to you because I think you’re the only one who’ll understand –_

Tony shut his laptop with a snap.

There was a glass of orange juice, arranged neatly at twelve centre-metres left of the keyboard. Virgin orange juice, because after yesterday he had reached the terrifying, dizzying conclusion that alcohol was no longer helping. He considered getting up and adding vodka to it. He considered shattering it against the wall.

 _Maybe,_ said a horrible little voice in his head, _you’re not drinking because you’re trying to hold Steve to that promise he made yesterday._

He leant forward, massaging his temples. Steve was in the gym, still working away. Collision and avoidance. Their old dance.

_Maybe you’re trying to show him you’re stable so that you can lock that down before he realises what a catastrophic mistake you are. Ten years of loving you ain’t forever, baby. There’s still time for him to change his mind._

“Shut up,” he whispered.

_But he’s far too honourable for a divorce, isn’t he? You know that. As soon as he’s said the words ‘till death do us part’ he’ll never break that promise. All you’ve got to do is fake two months, three max, of functional stability and get him down the alter. You’ll finally have your dream. A Steve Rogers who can never leave you._

“No,” he whispered, but he could see it so clearly – Steve his, inescapably his. Trapped with a man who would inevitably disappoint him, yes, but always there at the end of the day. Tony might fuck up over and over, but Steve would never leave him once he made that vow.

_Pity you can’t get pregnant. Then you’d really be able to snare him. But who knows, you’ve been exposed to a lot of weird alien stuff over the years. Why don’t you go poke some holes in a condom and see if you got lucky?_

“Fuck off,” he yelled, and beat his fist into the table until pain rocketed along his arm.

“Who, me?” And there was Steve, perfectly timing his entrance with Tony’s mental breakdown. Well. No hope of a white wedding now.

“Nope. Just…” He dragged a hand across his face. “Just yelling at the voices in my head.”

Steve hummed. “It sounds like you’re disagreeing with them, at least. That’s good. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.”

“All right. I’ll get started on – lunch? Is it lunch? My internal clock’s gone haywire.”

Tony squinted at the stove. “It’s – three? So close enough.”

“Great. I was thinking carbonara, is that ok?” He was pulling boxes out of the shelves – nothing Tony recognised, but then again, it wasn’t like he did his own grocery shopping.

“What are you doing?”

The words were out before he’d thought about them. Steve didn’t look up. “I’m making carbonara. I realise cooking is something of a foreign concept.”

“No, I meant… here. What are you doing here?”

That caught Steve’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“You came here to talk, right? Well, we’ve talked. Said everything that’s been rattling around inside us. What’s left to do? Just stay here, playing house, occasionally getting into screaming fights?”

“If you want me gone, just say so and I’ll be gone.” Steve’s voice was tight with anger. “But don’t tell me to leave for my own sake. I’m a big boy, I can decide where I need to be.”

“Right, but why do you need to be here?”

“To fix things.” Steve’s eyes had never been truer. Those were his battle eyes, his Avengers-Assemble eyes, the ones that dared the world to try and break him. Tony turned his face away.

“What if things can’t be fixed?” he said, blunt as he could. “What if, in the history of all the terrible things that have happened to our friendship, this is the thing that breaks us?”

“Ok.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, ok.” Steve had gone back to his meal prep. “If this is the thing that breaks us, if we can never get past this, then I suppose I’ll just have to accept that. But at the moment, that’s just an _if.”_

“Steve – “

“No, let me finish. Have I ever lied to you? In word or deed, have I ever?”

“Well, there was that time with an electromagnetic pulse – “

“All right, apart from that.”

Tony took a moment to consider. “No. No, you haven’t.”

“So what made you think I was lying last night?”

“I didn’t.”

“I know.” Steve’s eyes were soft. He had started chopping the shallots. “You just didn’t believe me, and I’m slowly learning not to take that as a personal affront. Tony, my life has been about you for the last ten years. It will continue to be about you until this serum stops keeping me upright. You call this playing house? I call this staying.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tony, then “I have to sit down. Also, I’m sober.”

“I know,” said Steve. “I know all those things. Look, I told you the truth, all right? The second you want me gone, I will be down those steps faster than you can finish your thought. I won’t even pick up my stuff. But until then, I am staying for as long as you’ll have me. I’ll put in work, every day, to fix this. Fix us. I know I can never make up for what I did to you. But I think I could make it better. I think this thing – this relationship. It’s worth that.”

“What you did to me.”

Steve swallowed, but kept his eyes on Tony. “Yes. I’m so, so sorry. I will always be sorry. Like I said, if you want me to leave you will never see me again, you won’t even hear about me – “

“Woah woah woah slow down. Ok. Steve, I know this is going to sound stupid, but you know you were raped too, right?”

Steve blinked. “Tony, I held you down and – “

“Yeah, let’s not do a blow by blow. All that shit – that was just the trappings. You were forced to have sex that you did not consent to. That is rape. You were raped. I’m not the victim of you. We’re the victims of Killgrave.”

“Tony, you don’t understand.” He shut his eyes. “I felt – when it was happening – “

“What, because you came? That doesn’t fucking matter. It doesn’t matter if it felt like that because Killgrave told you to, or because of the biology of penises. None of that changes the central facts of what happened on that island.”

“I violated you.”

“By that logic, I violated you too.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Steve, I’m beginning to think you may have some patriarchal heteronormative associations about who penetrates who which are playing into your levels of guilt here.”

“Play nice, not all of us took a semester of Queer Theory to fill our Social Studies requirement.”

“And yet you clearly understood everything I just said.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, shockingly I tried to catch up on a lot of the social development I missed. I guess – I guess – “

Tony took pity on him. “I guess you can’t process this right now, and you’d quite like to be allowed to go back to making the pasta?”

Steve gestured at him with the cutting knife, mock-stern. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean this conversation is over. I’m no longer sure what it’s about, but I’m pretty sure it’s not over.”

Tony laughed, and let Steve go back to his chopping. Which left him with the laptop, and the e-mail sitting on it. Oh, that was fun. God, he had far too many feelings, they kept distracting him from each other. He was going to have to make a schedule. Maybe colour code it. Pepper could probably work out a system.

“That laptop done something to offend you?”

“No, just… An e-mail from Jan.”

“What’s it say?”

“Haven’t read it yet.”

There was silence from that one. Tony turned to see Steve studying the splashback.

“All right, winghead?”

“I’m trying to think of something comforting to say,” said Steve absently.

“How’s it going?”

“Coming up empty. But I think you should read it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He scooped up his laptop. “I’ll be out on the veranda if you need me.”

“In my day we just called ‘em porches!” Steve called, and Tony laughed again.

It felt good to laugh without an edge of bitterness. It felt less good once he was actually set up out on the veranda. The wind was chilly enough that he needed to drag a blanket around him and switch on the heatlamp, which Steve would probably grouse at him for. _It’s a waste of energy, Tony, just put on a jumper._ The man was insufferable about the comforts of modern technology.

It was possible he was avoiding opening his laptop.

 _Shut up being such a pussy about it,_ said his internal Clint. He sighed and opened it.

_Dear Tony_

_I needed to get this out there, so I wrote to you because I think you’re the only one who’ll understand. You’ve been my friend – and yes, more than that occasionally – for so long. You know, there are some days I feel like you’re the last one who really gets me. The original Avengers, right? The ones who were there when it was just a pipe dream and four people who didn’t really trust each other. When it all felt so unsteady and certain to fail. When it was just us, the people who made up a team, rather than an idea so big it steamrolled over our lives and carried on without us into the future._

_Well. Without me. I suppose it’s always revolved around you and Steve, hasn’t it? I know some of the younger ones find it impossible to imagine an Avengers without Captain America in it. Like those early days are a weird blip before the Avengers proper got started. I think you see it that way too sometimes. Do you remember life before Steve? I mean really remember it, not just the bare bones. I don’t know if you understand how different you were after he arrived. It was like all your life you’d kept this spark of yourself locked away inside, and Steve was the key._

_I’m probably rubbing salt in an open wound, huh? So much for my fabled tact. I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that there was someone like that for me. But you probably already know that._

_I’m glad you don’t remember Steve’s death._

_Anyway, I imagine you’re wondering why I say that you’re the only one who understands when Thor and Hank are still around. Well, Thor’s always been a little different than the rest of us. One foot on Earth, one off. And Hank – Hank and I don’t seem to understand each other on anything, these days. I think he’s trying to create this mythical space around the early days of our courtship in the Avengers, this grand narrative of us as pioneering idealists carving the way for superheroes to come. When what we were was four colleagues. Friends eventually, yes, but the team served a function._

_I don’t think any of us predicted it becoming a family._

_You know, I considered myself lucky. I’ve always thought of The Wasp as an extension of Janet Van Dyne. It wasn’t an identity for me – it was a dress and a pair of gauntlets that I put on to go to work. I know it was more complicated for you. Tony Stark and Iron Man were too very different people for so long. And when your identity came out, I think Tony Stark became the extension of Iron Man rather than the other way around. Your own self became a public performance instead of just being – you._

_Anyway, like I said, The Wasp was just a uniform. And before, that felt liberating. Healthy._ _There was no heroic persona, there was just – me, doing good. I didn’t even feel a disconnect during the trouble with Hank – look at me, so tactful, I mean the period when my husband was beating me – because in my head, that was doing good too. I was staying with him. I was pouring love into a wound so it could heal. Honestly, sometimes I wish I could reach back in time and just slap my mother for the things she taught me._

_So it was always just me, and that was fantastic. But now there’s a problem, because Janet Van Dyne is broken, and I really, really wish I could just crawl away and be The Wasp._

_Aren’t we a pair? I know you. You’ll be sitting around thinking you’re not worthy of being Iron Man – who is, I must remind you, you. And I’m here wishing I had another better person to change into._

_After our return, I think I was pretty much psychological Jell-o. I barely remember agreeing to come to England. I feel like it was all one long fugue of staring out of the window of our apartment and watching the rain fall while Hank spoke about how we were done with the superhero life forever (heard that one before, of course). Then yesterday I think I just – woke up. One minute I was looking at the rain, and the next I was looking at the trees and seeing how green they were. And I was alive._

_I’m making that sound so much more positive than it was. It hurt. You know when you wake up after an injury, and you’re both furious about the pain and very pleased that you’re no longer unconscious because it means you’re not dead?_

_The point of this long and rambling letter is that I’m coming back to New York, and I’m putting my bid in to lead the Avengers. I’m pretty sure I’ll win. That sounds conceited, but with Carol in space and you and Steve having left I’m the most obvious leader, and Natasha tells me that no one else is especially keen to stand. I’m planning to reform the team, ask a few new (and old) faces to join. I’m also pretty sure Hank won’t be coming with me, so I’m extremely psyched for that conversation. Yes, I’m telling you before I’m telling Hank, I know, I’m horrific._

_The Avengers will always be your home and your family. If you want to come back – well, it’s your tower, I couldn’t keep you out if I tried. But I don’t think you should immediately. I think you should take some time to just be Tony. Not Tony-Stark-Who’s-Iron-Man. The Tony that you think died in the desert. I know you didn’t like him much, but honey, I have some terrible news – he’s still you. Just you._

_I love you. Be well._

_Janet Van Dyne._

His face was wet. When had that happened? He felt like he was swimming to the surface after being submerged in Jan’s voice, her manner, her scent. Steve’s hand was on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Jan…” His voice was hoarse. “Jan’s going to be all right.”

He was being wrapped in a hug. Everything felt strange, distant. Was this waking up? It felt more like beginning to dream. Steve smelt of parmesan and cigarettes.

“Come eat,” Steve said.


	6. Giving Me The Blues

(now)

“Barton. Barton, wake up.”

Something was attacking him in his sleep. Something with deadly intent. He grabbed blindly at it, which seemed to be the best defence he could muster.

“Yes, my thighs are wonderful. Runner’s body. Wake up, I can’t sleep.”

“Why’d I have t’ suffer too?”

“Because your primary purpose on this island is to entertain me.”

Clint rolled over, pinning Pietro without opening his eyes. “There. I have you pinned. Go back to sleep.”

“I haven’t been to sleep.” There was an uneasy whine in Pietro’s voice. Clint shifted and eyed the clock.

“The fuck, Maximoff, it’s four am.”

“I know. I, too, am upset at being awake at this time.”

“So what, you thought you’d wake up your twenty-four-hour sex toy so he could fuck you back to sleep? Go screw yourself forever, I’m not here to pleasure your every whim.”

“Clint – “

“No.” He rolled back to his side of the bed, dragging the blanket with him. Let Pietro shiver. “Your boner is not more important than my sleep schedule, Jesus Christ. How fucking self-centred do you have to be – did you not think, for one minute, that maybe I wouldn’t appreciate this? That maybe if you want a fuck, it might be worth turning me on, getting me in the mood, doing anything other than treating me like a rent boy who needs to earn his keep? You are a selfish cumstain on the fabric of my life.”

There was silence from the other side of the bed, as he knew there would be. Pietro would still be brooding on the cruel universe that wouldn’t hand him dick every time he felt like it. He’d known the man had no idea how to have a functional relationship before they started this, but Pietro found new and exciting ways to lower the bar every day.

That’s if they could even call this a relationship. Pietro certainly hadn’t. He’d just shown up at Clint’s door two days after the rescue. _I’m taking my sister to an island to recover._ He hadn’t looked at Clint while he said it. _She needs peace. You could come too, if you want. I think we both deserve a holiday, and Wanda needs someone who’s not – who’s a little more emotionally adjusted than me._

Clint had, for a hot second, considered the possibility that Pietro really was only asking him along as a friend to Wanda. Whatever had happened to them in that crate had come completely out of left field, and it wasn’t like there had been a lot more time to explore it. But then he’d looked at that high blush on Pietro’s cheeks, the one that was rapidly become his favourite expression, and thought: _nah, he wants me._

Pietro was very careful to keep it from Wanda, of course. _Who knows how she might be feeling about sex,_ was his explanation, though Clint was pretty sure there was more to it. Was pretty sure that Wanda knew anyway. She was less broken than Clint expected. She kept odd hours, and was very, very quiet, but there were fewer nightmares and screaming fits than he’d thought there would be. Maybe it was because this villa felt like a bubble out of time, where all the shit that had accumulated in their lives could float away and vanish behind them. Maybe it was because they were cut off from the internet and newspapers here, so she hadn’t seen the headlines. She knew about them, of course – Pietro had not been happy about telling her when the call came in from Bobbi, but Clint put his foot down. But none of them had seen. Instead they drank local wines with unpronounceable names and shucked oysters and watched Wanda paint, and every evening Clint had to resist the urge to put his hand in Pietro’s and say _maybe we could stay here._

But that had been the stupid, romantic side of himself talking, the side that did shit like marrying someone he’d met ten days ago. The sensible part of himself saw the way that Pietro could only ask for sex by starting a fight, the way he still stood between Wanda and Clint as if scared to leave them alone together, the way he responded to any criticism with the harshest possible putdown. He’d been deluding himself into thinking this meant anything other than a fuck to Pietro, because that narcissistic asshole –

“I’m sorry.”

\- would clearly never – wait.

Clint sat straight up. “Did you just apologise? Is that a thing that actually happened?”

“Yes.” Pietro’s voice was tight. “And now I’m going to go one worse and expand on that apology, so please lie back down and don’t look at me while it happens.”

“All right,” said Clint, settling back.

“I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about that fucking island.” Clint held his breath. Pietro hadn’t spoken about Killgrave’s island except to allude to it occasionally and then immediately move on. “I know what we went through was just a fraction of what everyone else went through, but it still – haunts me. I know that’s not much better than just wanting sex because I couldn’t sleep, but I was desperate, I suppose. It’s still selfish. I’m sorry.”

“Twice in one day,” said Clint. “All right, come here.” He pulled Pietro over to him, arranged them so that Pietro’s legs were tangled with his own. “You know I still think about it too, don’t you? I’m not a huge fan of being woken ever, honestly. But if you say something like, I don’t know, ‘Hey Clint I really can’t be alone with my thoughts right now because I keep on thinking of our very recent trauma,’ I might be less grouchy. I know that would require emotional vulnerability and shit. We can consider it a work in progress.”

“I am terrified that you are this relationship’s expert on emotions.”

“Aaaand moment ruined.” He didn’t move from Pietro’s side, though. “Though you make a fair point, I guess. I’m mostly just repeating stuff Kate says to me.”

“I think, I’d like… to meet her.”

Clint raised his head and squinted at him suspiciously. “Are you just saying open and honest shit like that because you think it will get you laid?”

“I don’t – “

“Because it will. Roll over.”

“- think – what?”

He slapped Pietro’s ass. “You heard what I fucking said, pretty boy. Roll over.”

“Make me.”

Oh, one of _those_ nights. He pushed at Pietro’s shoulders. “You need to be reminded who’s boss?”

“You, boss?” God, that sneering tone. Hard to believe he’d once hated it now that it got him so hard. “Please, Barton. You couldn’t lead us out of a paper bag.”

“Right, that’s it.” He wrestled Pietro into position face down. There was no way he’d actually win a tussle between the two of them but fighting back wasn’t the point. “You want it rough, you’re getting it rough. No, I want you to stay there. I’m going to get you nice and ready and open for me. You’re going to be begging for it.”

Pietro gasped. “Fuck you, I won’t – “

“Yeah you will. You think you’re such a tough guy, huh? Let’s see how tough you are when you’re writhing on my cock.”

Clint moved down, spreading Pietro’s ass and stroking at his hole with one finger, watching it flutter and clench. “Yeah, you like that, don’t you? Like having your cunt stroked. Like getting fingered until you scream. Want me to eat you out? Get you wet for me so I can fuck you?”

“Hnnnrrgh,” said Pietro, which Clint took for a yes. At the first lick Pietro spasmed, limbs flailing against the bed. He pressed in deeper, flicking his tongue across that pretty little hole. Pietro was whimpering and thrusting against the mattress. Clint wanted to drag every single one of those sounds out of him, lick him open until he was gasping and pleading and crying. Until his dick was sore and throbbing and he came from just one touch.

But tonight was not that night. “Pass me – “ The lube was being pressed back into his hand. “Wow. Someone’s eager. All right, baby I got you.” He pressed a kiss into Pietro’s hips as he warmed the lube up in his hand and slathered his fingers. “I’ll give you what you need.”

He pressed in. Pietro’s groan turned into a scream as he twisted his finger, pushing against the prostate. His face was creased, eyes closed.

“You’ve got such a tight cunt,” Clint murmured, his other hand stroking back Pietro’s hair. “You were just made to get fucked like this. If I just did this, one finger this slow, do you think you could come from it? Bet you could. Bet it would take hours. I should tie you to the bed and just tease you until you scream.”

“Please – “ Pietro’s voice was bitten off and strangled.

“Please what? You want something, you have to ask for it.”

Pietro was flushed, his eyes squeezed shut. “Please more.”

“More fingers?” A nod. “Harder?” Another nod. “Good. Then ask me to fuck you harder.” A shake, and Clint stilled his finger, just rubbing against that tight bundle of flesh. Pietro’s body was shaking with agony. “Ask me, or I won’t.”

“Please fuck me harder.”

“Good boy.” He pushed in another finger, stretching them apart until Pietro’s spine twisted under his hands. “Easy now. Just lie there and take it.”

He moved faster, rougher, one hand splayed on Pietro’s back to hold him in place. Even his neck was flushed, and Clint ducked his head and explored that with his mouth, pressing at the blush with his tongue until Pietro whined and he bit down.

“Fuck, Clint, I – “

“You like that, don’t you?” Clint pressed another bite at the place his neck met his shoulder and matched it on the other side. Pietro’s noises were closer to sobs. “Want me to mark you up, so everyone can see who’s bitch you are. Maybe I should make you go to a meeting like that. Bite marks all up your neck and my cum dripping down your face. Everyone already knows you’re a mess, I should let them know you’re being taken care of.”

“Please,” Pietro whispered, and Clint pressed a kiss into his jaw.

“I’m going to fuck you now. And you are going to lie still. You will not move. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“If you move, I will pull out and hold you down while I jerk off over your ass. Leave you dripping wet and still hard. Do you want that?”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to fuck me.” The words came muffled by a pillow. By now, the shame would be leaking of his eyes, and he wouldn’t want Clint to see. Part of him always wanted to just hold Pietro when he got like this, kiss him while they made love. _It’s all right to like this, you don’t have to be ashamed._ But the shame was part of it for Pietro.

Also, Clint really wanted to fuck.

He pushed in. Pietro made a noise so long and low it sounded like it had been dragged from him. Clint had to take a second just to catch his breath and talk his orgasm down. He could feel the minute vibrations in his cock from Pietro holding himself completely still. Every single muscle in his body was taut as a bowstring.

“Good, so good,” he murmured, pushing his fingers into Pietro’s mouth. He pulled out and snapped back in, brutal and fast. Pietro’s body jerked underneath him. “I said hold still, fucker.”

“I’m sorry.” A harsh whisper. Clint thrust in again, three sharp strokes that made Pietro’s fingers scrabble at the sheets. His back was shaking with effort.

“You’re so beautiful,” Clint crooned. “Lying there and just taking it.” He wrapped his fingers through that moonlight hair, tugging on it in time with his thrusts. Pietro wailed like a siren. The sheets were tearing under his fingers. “Do you like this?”

“I – “ He cut off to scream, and Clint wrenched his head back by the hair.

“I said, do you like this?”

“Yes.”

“What do you like?”

“I like this, I like all of it.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Pietro shuddered. “Please don’t make me.”

Clint gripped Pietro’s throat and squeezed, holding down just long enough for a spike of pain to kick in. “You will. You’re going to do exactly as I ask. Because you’re mine, you get that? You’re mine. I own you.”

Pietro gasped as Clint released him. “You own me,” he burbled. “You own me you own me you own me – “

“Say it.” He punctuated each word with a slap on the ass. Pietro writhed like an animal.

“I love getting fucked by you,” he choke-squealed. “I love it when you fuck me, just use me, I’m yours, I’m filth, I’m nothing.”

Clint wrapped a hand around his cock. “Not nothing. You’re mine. I’m going to take care of you, ok? Come on you little slut, let me see you, come for me – “

Pietro threw back his head and screamed, tears pouring from his eyes. This was what shamed him the most, Clint knew – the tenderness and his need for it. He kissed Pietro’s shoulder, ran a hand down his hip. “Such a good boy, you’re doing so well for me sweetheart. Such a good, tight fuck. So pretty when you’re desperate like this.”

Clint kissed him, cruel and gentle, and Pietro screamed into his mouth and came again and again, bucking under Clint’s hand. Clint pushed him down into the mattress and fucked him brutally, Pietro whimpering and twitching in overstimulation.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, and then he came buried to the hilt inside the perfection of Pietro’s body. His orgasm spangled behind his eyes, wiped him out, everything disappearing behind the need to get deeper, deeper, fill Pietro up till he was dripping.

He collapsed, Pietro squawking as he landed on him.

“Feel better?”

There was a muffled harrumph. “Get out of my ass.”

Clint laughed and set about wiping them down. Pietro, pillow-princess that he was, just lay there twitching. Clint settled back into bed and wrapped himself around him.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered. There was a solid thirty second window after sex where Pietro would accept affection, and Clint always made good use of it. “You don’t know how wonderful you are.”

“You’re pretty good yourself.”

“Wow, really? Don’t overdo it on the praise there.”

Pietro thumb ghosted along Clint’s hand. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me for sex.”

“I feel a lot better now, though. So.”

“Yeah? So do I.” He ghosted his hands along Pietro’s back. “I love – this. I love all of it. I’m not doing it as some favour to you.”

There was a sound that could have been a snort. Clint rolled over and flexed his knee. It was twanging something fierce. Possibly this was exactly the kind of ‘physical exertion’ the doctors had told him to avoid. He’d get a lot of sharp questions at his next check-up. Maybe he could bring them a picture of Pietro half-naked in the Cretan dawn-light. _Honestly, doc, how can you blame me?_

“You put a lot of trust in me,” he said, hoping his voice was steady. “And that means something to me, ok? I know it’s difficult for you to show this part of yourself because you’ve got some fucked up ideas about _right_ and _wrong_ in bed. But you believe in me enough to let me make you feel good, and that’s – I don’t know, I don’t want to use some stupid word like _honoured_ here, but – any time you want to jump in with a sharp comment to save me from my downward spiral it would be much appreciated.”

There was silence from the other side of the bed.

“Ok, probably a bit much for half-four in the morning, I’ll admit. We can circle back to all that later. How you feeling, anyway?”

More silence. It was possible he was laying it on a bit thick. No one wanted to talk about their feelings immediately after getting the feelings fucked out of them. Clint nudged him tentatively.

“All right, scratch that. Let’s just say the sex was great. That was – Pietro? Pietro? You are – you are asleep. Unfuckingbelievable.”

So much for a relationship built on reciprocity and equal availability. Another work in progress.

He wasn’t going to get back to sleep following that morning workout. He pulled on a robe – silk, because apparently Maximoffs had bougie taste – and, after brushing his teeth, wandered into the kitchen, whistling aimlessly. This place did _not_ come with a coffee maker, and Pietro’s attempt to cater to Clint’s taste had been a bag of the worst instant he’d ever put in his mouth, but he was getting eight hours of sleep a night (usually) so contenting himself with tea wasn’t bad. He made his way out onto the porch overlooking the ocean, mug in hand, to find Wanda sitting at the table watching the sun rise.

Where she had probably been for a while. He looked up, praying that he and Pietro had closed their bedroom window last night. No such luck. Welp, they were conveniently close to a large body of water. If he took off sprinting now, he’d probably be able to drown himself before one of the twins caught him.

“I already knew,” said Wanda, not taking her eyes off the ocean. There was a smirk in her voice. “It’s not like you were subtle.”

“Ah… ok. Still, um, I’m sorry that – your brother – doing that – “

“I’m a witch, Clint. I used a spell to muffle the sounds.”

“Oh thank fucking god.” He sat down at the table. “Up early or late?”

“Early. I think I went to take a nap at four yesterday and just slept on through.” She sipped her tea. “This is by far the nicest place any member of my family has taken me to convalesce. Do you think they’ll ever let me back?”

“Who?”

“The Avengers. It’s not like a have a great history of handling trauma. I could understand if they felt it better to bench me permanently.”

He examined her from the corner of his eye. You forgot how beautiful Wanda was. Most of the superheroes he’d shared a team with were pretty damn hot, but Wanda was something else, ethereal and sensual all at once. Not for the first time, he wondered if that was a blessing or a curse. Vision wasn’t really programmed to see physical beauty in humans. Perhaps that was why Wanda had picked him.

“Red, Pietro didn’t kidnap you, right?”

“What?”

“Like, he came to you and said _Do you want to go to Crete with me_ and you thought about it and said _yes.”_

“Yes. Though we’re two weeks in, Clint. Perhaps you should have asked about this before.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t really think he had. My point is that you made a decision of your own free will to be here getting better. No men picking you up and carrying you off and telling you what to do. Far as I can tell, most of your problems got caused by people who thought they were too damn smart to let you think for yourself.”

“And occasionally psychosis.”

“Yeah, and that. Look, for what it’s worth, if you want to go back to the Avengers? I’ll put in my word that you seem to be doing pretty good, for the half a shit anyone’s going to give about my opinion.”

“You’re far too hard on yourself, Clint. You’ve always been a remarkable hero. People trust you.”

“Yeah, well.” He scratched his head. “The past few years haven’t exactly been great for me.”

“We’re here to heal, aren’t we?”

Clint scoffed. “You think that’s why Pietro asked me to come here? He could just tell I needed a holiday?”

“I think that’s one reason. My brother isn’t entirely the selfish idiot he appears.”

“I thought you called him a sociopath.”

“Well, when he decides to care, he cares. And I like to think he’s healing too.” She tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “He’s always had a hard time accepting that anyone other than me could – understand him. Care about him. I think he decided to not care about people first.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Wasn’t that what Pietro really wanted, when he asked Clint to choke him, to bully him, to shame him? Someone’s attention. Someone who cared enough about him to whip him into shape. “I really want to fight your dad.”

Wanda smiled. “Get in line.”

The rising sun was peach-toned. It bought out the red underlayer in Wanda’s hair, made her look vibrant and inhuman. Her perfect mask was still in place. _Mysterious,_ people always called her, and about half of that was racism but the other half was onto something. Most people he knew pulled on an armour over themselves so that the world bounced off their true self – Pietro’s hauteur, Clint’s own dumbest-guy-ever act, Tony’s everything. Wanda just closed her doors. There was no false front, nothing to see here. The pain of having that cracked open must be unimaginable.

“Ok, I’m going to ask you something,” he said, “and I apologise for how fucking stupid this question is, but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it. How are you, really?”

She tipped her head back. “Well, my answer is also stupid, but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it either. There are good days and bad days.”

“I hear that,” he said, and lapsed into silence. A dog was racing across the sand, its sharp yips full of joy. He hoped it had a family it was returning to. He should probably give Kate a call, ask how Lucky was.

“I’m just tired,” said Wanda suddenly. “I go through so much shit in my life. There’s all this trauma and horrible anxiety and fear but underneath it all I’m almost – _bored._ I mean, I just want to turn to the universe and say – again? You’re doing this to me, again? So it’s not me that I’m worried about, not really. It’s the others that I can’t stop thinking about. I want to reach out to them, but I don’t think I’d be welcome. I mean, I spoke to Steve, but – we’re the only ones who really understand, you know? And _he_ made sure that we couldn’t even turn to each other for comfort. I think of Jan, and I want to hold her, and my heart just bleeds.”

She pressed her face into her hands.

“I’m sorry,” said Clint. “I really am.”

“Jan, she’s – “ She took a deep breath. “She’s everything to me. I’m sorry, that’s probably weird for you to hear.”

“What, because you’re both my sort-of exes? I’m screwing your twin, we’re good.” He reached over and stroked her hair, in what was hopefully a comforting rather than a creepy way. “She’s left Hank again. I don’t know If you heard. She’s going back to New York.”

“I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me.”

“Well, she’s probably just trying to give you space. You know how Jan is. She’s a very big believer in talking through issues unless they’re her own.”

Wanda laughed and tucked her head into his shoulder. They watched the sun come up.

“Do you think we should fuck?”

Steve tried not to choke. “Ah, I – I’d – we’ve only just sat down to eat, Tony.”

Tony put down his glass – just water, and Steve wasn’t sure how to feel about _that._ “It didn’t mean as in bend-me-over-the-table-immediately. I just mean, if we’re in for the long haul – look, we’ve been friends for years, you’ve seen headlines about me, you know what my libido is.”

“I do.”

“And, while I know you’re more inclined to monogamy than I am, I’m fairly sure that yours is – quite high.”

Steve tried not to blush. “What makes you say that?”

“Extrapolation. The serum heightened all your body’s needs. You eat more, you need to move more, I reckon you need to fuck more. How often do you jerk off?”

Somehow Tony’s matter of fact tone was making this more excruciating. Steve eyed his fork and considered stabbing himself in the neck. “Can I please remind you that I was raised Catholic in the thirties? Also, I worked really hard at this carbonara.”

“Yeah, it’s good,” said Tony absently, mouth full. “Ok, you’re ashamed about masturbation, interesting. I know you’re not generally prudish. My point is, if you’re serious about this being long haul, then eventually we’re going to need to fuck. Unless you want to be an open thing – “

“No.” Too harsh. He took a deep breath. His anger was getting out of control. “I’m sorry. But please, no.”

Tony’s eyes, when Steve finally forced himself to look at him, were level and calm. “Yeah, me neither. I’m about done with sharing you.” He turned back to his plate. “Ok, so I think we need to be matter of fact about this. It’s going to suck. The first few tries are probably going to be washes. Do you – do you still want me that way?”

Did he still _want_ Tony that way. A memory rose, unbidden – a little after Osbourne’s fall, when he and Tony had saved the nine realms while Tony was completely naked. The shock of his body against Steve’s on that horse. The way he’d jerked off in the shower after they’d gotten back, hands over his mouth as he imagined himself going a different route, asking Tony to show how serious he was about making amends. Tony’s body against his –

He wasn’t wrong about Steve being ashamed about his masturbatory habits. The serum had heightened his libido to an extent that was sometimes painful. He’d thought about fucking all his team-mates at some point or another – Natasha’s lithe little body bucking up against him, Namor’s imperious mouth around his cock, Sam’s strong arms holding him tight. But he’d always come hardest, fastest, when he thought about Tony. _That_ was why he was ashamed.

“That’s a worryingly long pause,” said Tony.

“I think I’ve already shown you how much I want you,” said Steve. “I’m – I don’t think I could ever stop.”

“Do you want to?”

“Let’s not have this fight again. I’ve wanted to, in the past. I – yes, I want to want to. Sometimes. I don’t like feeling like this.”

“So you don’t want to.” Tony’s voice was sullen.

“I don’t want to want _anyone_ this much. I’m not good at feeling overwhelmed.” He smiled, aimed for a light tone. “You know, I’m beginning to think I might have control issues.”

Tony didn’t take the bait. “I think that’s part of our problem. We’re both so used to resisting this. I know why _I_ do it, obviously, and so do you.”

“I do?”

“The whole I’m-bad, you’re-good thing. I don’t deserve you. And I know at the moment you don’t think you deserve me. But before that – why? The trust, obviously. But I think there’s more than that. I don’t know, maybe I just hope there’s more than that.”

Steve steepled his fingers under his chin. “Do you remember when I asked you when you fell in love with me?”

“Couldn’t forget.”

“Well, you didn’t ask me back, and I’m about to tell you, so let me know if you don’t want to know.” Tony said nothing, so he carried on. “I mean, I don’t think anyone knows when they fell in love, exactly, but I know the moment I realised it. It was the moment I found out you were Tony Stark.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I figured that would surprise you. I’d been falling for my old pal Iron Man for a long time, obviously. Hadn’t realised it. But – you know how you have things you build your life around? Your family, your friends, the anchors you have that keep you in place. Most people have a few of those, but not me. I’d been centring my entire life around you for a long time. There’d been this big space I had all carved out for you, and I think – unconsciously – I felt safe because I thought there was no one else who’d ever take you away from me. I mean, Iron Man couldn’t take the armour off, right? So no wife, no girlfriend, nothing that could ever compete with me except for his job with Tony Stark. Who – and I swear this is true – I also had the most godawful crush on.”

“Fuck ooooooofff,” breathed Tony, delighted. “What?”

“Yep! It was real fun. I’m sure I was about as mature as a twelve-year-old about it, it probably wasn’t obvious at all when I leapt at the chance to teach good ol Mr Stark hand to hand.”

“It wasn’t,” said Tony. “It really, really wasn’t.”

Steve flushed. “Well, anyway. That was how I’d defined it all – me and Iron Man, bachelor pals together forever, and Tony Stark, the dreamy billionaire I went a little moony-eyed over. Can you believe that a couple of times I nearly plucked up the courage to ask you – you as Iron Man – how I might ask Tony Stark out? I had a whole speech prepared about how obviously I wasn’t sure if he’d be interested and if it made things weird for our friendship I’d back off.” Tony was shaking with laughter. “Yeah, luckily I never did that.”

“Oh, fuck me,” said Tony, hysterical. “Oh my god, ok. So then we’re in that dungeon with the Melter and I turn around in my itty-bitty red thong and you go _oh no I have pants feelings AND friend feelings for the same person?”_

“Pants feelings, really?” He threw a napkin at Tony’s head, which only sent him further into giggles. “No, it wasn’t that. I just suddenly realised that Iron Man could actually take off the armour and date – that Iron Man definitely did date, and did a lot, because he was you, the most beautiful man on the planet. I didn’t even realise that I thought of you as mine until you suddenly weren’t anymore.”

Tony had stopped laughing. “I was yours, Steve. By then, I’d been yours for a while.”

“Well, you were still dating other people.” Tony frowned. “No, I’m not being mad about it. I know it was selfish to think about Iron Man – about you – the way I did. My point is you’re not the only one who thought he wasn’t good enough for someone.”

“I wish you had asked me how to ask out Mr Stark.”

“What would you have done?”

“I like to think I would have taken my helmet off.” Tony was staring into space. “But I also thought I’d be dead in six months then, so who knows.”

Would it have changed anything, if Tony had? He imagined a world where they’d been together since day one, through all their fights. Perhaps they wouldn’t have been fights at all, or at the very least they’d have been smaller ones. If Tony had been his, in every way, maybe they would have stayed on the same side during the Civil War. Maybe Tony would have told him the truth. Maybe Steve would have forgiven him when he didn’t.

But these were not things for him to know.

(then)

“Oh great,” said Rogue. “More Avengers.”

Sharon sighed. “I’m not actually an Avenger.”

“My apologies, let me rephrase. Oh great, the government’s here.”

“Please leave this island,” said Gambit in a monotone. “Immediately. There is nothing to see here, and nothing that could – “

“We would love to get the fuck off this island as quickly as possible, actually,” said Bobbi.

“Oh.” Gambit blinked. “Well, that’s great then – “

“Just as soon as you point us in the direction Clint Barton and Pietro Maximoff were going.”

The five of them were cramped in a tight little meeting room at the back of some bar. It seemed to have a Disney-pirate-meets-Route-66 theme going on, all covered in a liberal layer of dirt and general skulduggery. Sam would _not_ stop humming the Mos Eisley Cantina song.

Rogue was the first to break. She looked over at Gambit. “Well, it’s not like _we_ wanted to go after them alone.”

Gambit sighed. “I don’t know, mon amour. I still think we should wait for the X-Men. Having a telepath – “

“Would fuck everything up monumentally if Killgrave got to them,” said Rogue. She turned back to Sharon. “All right. We don’t know exactly where they went. They were supposed to rendezvous with us after checking Dodge’s records, but they never arrived. We know a ship left from there, and we think there’s a decent chance they got on it, either willingly or unwillingly, and didn’t have time to contact us, but by the time we checked that out it had been four hours. That was yesterday. I’ve done several sweeps over the ocean, but I’m afraid we’ve got nothing.”

“Torrence and Dodge’s records?” said Sam.

“We requisitioned them,” said Gambit, with a wink at Rogue. “And we can see what looks like two shipping logs with similar orders – one within the timeframe of when Torrence and Dodge were killed, and one which Barton and Pietro might have gotten on. But there’s no location, just a string of letters that don’t match. We think it’s some kind of code, but – “ He shrugged. “Not our forte. We’d get it out of the employees ourselves, but they haven’t returned. Presumably Killgrave did not take kindly to finding two superheroes amongst their cargo.”

“All right.” Sharon took a deep breath. Two more superheroes to fight. Oh, she was going to kill Clint Barton. “Rogue, can you work with Falcon to continue sweeping the area and looking for that ship? Mockingbird, you and Remy go and work anyone who might have come into contact with the orders for that island, shake out any piece of information you know. Give me the ledger with the code.”

“What are you going to do?” said Bobbi, tilting her head.

Sharon smirked. “Spy shit.”

(now)

Her arms were just beginning to shake from her – one-hundred-and-fiftieth? Two hundredth? – pull-up when the door to Jess’s room began to chime. She ignored it. Probably fucking Jan, trying to build rapport. They weren’t friends, they’d never been friends, and now they were never going to be friends. If there was an alert, it would have been raised on her card. Nobody needed her.

The chiming stopped. She took a breath and stepped back from the bar. She’d been working out far too much, recently. If she had been called into a fight right now she would have been barely able to raise a fist. It was just the burn she craved. The clean ache that cut right through the tangle of emotions in her centre.

The chiming stopped. She drank deeply from her water bottle. There had been a message from Carol earlier that she hadn’t wanted to read. Another from Logan, asking if she wanted to drink about it. Luke and Jessica had offered to bring Dani over. She was ever so popular these days.

The chiming started up again. “Fucking _what,”_ she snapped.

“It’s me,” said a voice she’d have been very glad to never hear again.

There was Carol when she opened the door, leaning against the frame with her flight jacket slung over her shoulders. Half-grin on her face, just a little bashful. As if she’d turned up twenty minutes late to movie night, rather than buggered off for two weeks after the worst experience of their lives.

“Hi,” she said.

“Oh, _fuck off.”_

“All right. Um, not sure what you’re mad at me for, but if you want me to go – “

“Isn’t that what you do best?” Jess didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Let Carol have it. Let her take every bit of anger and shame Jess felt, absorb it like she absorbed energy. Let her carry it with her into space again when she inevitably decided to fly away.

“What do I do best?”

“You leave.”

Jess turned away, pacing over to rest against the desk. She heard the door shut behind her as Carol came in.

“Well,” said Jess, crossing her arms over her chest. “Now you’re just trying to make me look wrong by staying.”

“Could we please have a conversation?”

“About what.”

“Anything. Literally anything. I will talk about – fuck, _Top Model_ or something. I just want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, the time for that was two weeks ago.”

Carol sighed. “Look, leaving wasn’t just about – this. I told Killgrave things he had no business knowing about our off-world defences. I had to go there and direct a bunch of changes to the system so that we weren’t vulnerable for attack anymore – “

“And you couldn’t just give them instructions over the phone?”

“No, because I’m in charge, Jess, and – could you please just look at me?”

“No thanks! It’s the trauma.”

“I told you when I got back I wanted to make it better,” said Carol. She sounded desperate.

Jess hunched further into herself. “And I don’t remember agreeing. I remember telling you to just go.”

There was the sound of something scuffing against wood. Carol had kicked the nightstand. “So we’re not even going to try? You told me – “

She laughed. She felt crazy, crazier than fucking Madripoor. She was a fool for coming back here. She should have run away. “Go on, Carol. Finish that sentence. What did I tell you?”

“I’m not having this conversation with your back.” Carol’s voice was a low, dangerous thrum.

Jess turned. She just wouldn’t look at Carol’s face. That was the trick that would get her through this conversation. But there was no part of her body that was safe to look at, and her eyes jumped uselessly from breast to hip to shoulder. She ended up staring past Carol’s cheek.

“You told me you loved me,” said Carol, soft as a breeze.

“Yeah, well. He told me to.”

“Told you to say that?”

It would be so easy to lie, but she couldn’t. “Told me to tell the truth. And I remember what you said back when he asked you.”

She wouldn’t imagine Killgrave’s voice. She heard Carol’s instead, broken from trying to fight back. _Sometimes I want to fuck her so badly I can hardly breathe._

Carol sighed. “I never wanted you to know.”

The wall behind Carol wavered, became the wall of that horrible bedroom, the one where Killgrave had sat in the corner and watched them. Jess tied down – why bother tying her down if you had mind control? Just to add another layer of degradation. She blinked hard and shook her head, and the wall returned to its neutral off-white.

“I should re-decorate,” she said.

“Weird segue but ok.”

“I’ve lived in white boxes that someone else owned for years.”

Carol furrowed her brow. “Is this a metaphor?”

“No, arsehole, I’m just taking stock of my life.”

“I love when you get all British on me.”

“Please do not use the L-word in my presence.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jess rubbed her chin. “I never wanted you to know either. That’s just the bare bones of it. We each had a friendship-ruining secret, and they came out. Friendship ruined.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“What else would it be? How the fuck do you see us moving on from here, Carol? What, we just go out for coffee and bitch about our acquaintances while pretending we both don’t know I’m in love with you?”

“I don’t know what it looks like, all right? I can’t imagine any kind of future – “

“There you go – “

“Any, Jess! With you or without you. Do you know why? Because the video of my rape currently has three-hundred thousand views online and nearly as many comments. So no, I don’t see us going out for coffee. I don’t see myself being anywhere in public on this fucking planet ever again.”

Jess slammed her fist into the wall. “I’m in that video too, and you didn’t see me fucking off out of the galaxy!” 

“What did you want me to do?”

“Literally anything but what you did!”

“I TRIED!”

Carol panted inches from Jess’s face. Her eyes flickered with desperate saccades, searching Jess for something. “I tried, didn’t I? I came to your hospital room. And what did I get? Another conversation with your back.”

Jess turned her face away. The shame was beginning to crawl up her throat. Any second now she would vomit it up. She clamped her lips tight against it, refused to speak.

“More silent treatment, huh?” Carol sounded bitter. “All right, then I’ll talk. Killgrave asked me the wrong question. He didn’t ask me if I loved you back.” Jess flinched, and she could tell by the answering hitch of breath that Carol had caught it. “I guess it doesn’t change anything.”

 _It changes everything,_ she wanted to say. She could bury herself in Carol’s arms and press her head into her shoulder. She would beg for Carol to take her to space, far away from this shitty planet filled with shitty people. What had Earth ever given her except more bruises on her soul, green and toxic?

But it would be a lie. Everything changed and nothing changed. Still coming in at number one as the most screwed up person on earth. Everything she touched turned to shit.

“We’re not going to fix anything today,” Jess said quietly. “I think you should just leave.”

“Yeah,” said Carol. “What I do best, right? And you’re doing what you do best too. Shutting me out.”

She didn’t reply. She kept her eyes fixed on the wall until she heard the soft click of the door.

“Tony, we should – “ Steve gasped, cutting off the words. “Tony, we should slow down, this isn’t – “

He’d thought after that humiliating, wonderful conversation last night that they’d reached some kind of understanding. Yes, there would be sex, but – eventually. _Eventually_ meant some far-off future, not two weeks from the last time he’d – oh Christ.

There had been no warning. He’d been working out, and Tony had come and leant against the wall of the gym to watch him. Steve had put down the weights to take a breath, leaning back on the bench, and Tony had been there to hand him a bottle of water. Wipe the sweat off his brow. Suddenly end up in his lap.

“Tony – “ God, he was so hard. Tony hadn’t stopped moving once, writhing and biting and sucking bruises into his skin. His neck was going to be a wreck. “Tony – “

“That’s right, say my name.” And then his mouth was on Steve’s, and their hips were pushing together and he could barely breathe. Tony’s hands were pushing down the waistband of Steve’s shorts, and then his own. Tony’s hand was around their cocks. He couldn’t stop thinking about it like that. Hands. Cocks. Mouths. Not _Tony and Steve,_ just a collection of body parts colliding at high speed.

“I’m going to come,” he said, a warning and a surprise all at once. When the hell had that happened? His body had gone from nothing to biting-edge of orgasm all without him noticing, because he’d been too distracted with Tony’s lips and breath and possible mental breakdown. He was going to come, embarrassingly fast, and it was possible that the mental breakdown here was actually his own.

But Tony pulled his hand away. “Not yet. We’re not done.”

There was something very important in that sentence, but Steve’s brain was gone. Completely vacated his skull as soon as Tony wriggled out of his shorts and ripped his t-shirt over his head. Every bit of concentration left was on his dick, which was now so hard he could have died.

“Tony – “ He reached forward to grab him, but Tony pushed him back onto the bench and climbed back onto his lap. Tony was sliding a condom onto Steve. He needed to start paying attention, stop letting his hands wander across that pale chest, fingers circling the RT and reaching down to pinch at those tight nipples.

“Steve.” Tony’s hands on his face, guiding his chin upwards. “Steve, I need your head in the game for a second, ok? We’re going to fuck now. I’m going to ride you. I need you to say yes or no.”

“Yes,” he said, then “I’m not going to last.”

“No shit. Me neither, sweetheart. Ok, here we go – “ And then Tony was sinking onto him, so tight around him that it was all Steve could do to whimper into Tony’s collarbone.

“Ok.” Tony was shaking. It sounded like he was talking to himself. “Ok, just – hold tight, yeah, like that.”

He started to ride Steve in earnest. It was impossible to feel this good. It felt like the first time he’d gotten drunk, like the time a meth lab had exploded in his face and gotten him the highest he’d ever been. This much pleasure, this much energy, was dangerous, it was wrong it was –

It was Tony burying his face in Steve’s neck and making high pitched little whimpers. It was his hands clutching at Tony’s back, running along his spine. It was tight and hot to the point of near-pain. He tried to move, tried to keep up with the brutal rhythm that Tony was setting, but his hips were uncoordinated, and he kept on being distracted by the clench of Tony’s ass around his cock and forgetting what he was meant to be doing.

“Tony,” he whined. His voice was broken. “It’s been so long, darling, I’ve been so – so – “

“I know. I know, Steve, I know.”

“Years,” he said, cut off. He didn’t know what he was saying. He couldn’t put it into words. _A decade,_ all coming together in his arms. _A lifetime,_ and Tony’s breath against Steve’s chest with his eyes shut tight. He was shaking with love, he didn’t know how to move, how did you move when all you’d ever known was longing and you finally got to _have._ No body was built to survive this.

“I love you,” said Tony. “Steve, I love you – you’re with me – Steve – “

“I’m with you,” he burbled. _Love love love_ said Tony’s voice in his brain. He’d heard it before, but not like this – Tony telling him, not forced out or part of some horrible game they were playing with each other but just _telling him._ Like they were two people who did that, just admitted they loved each other. Tony’s body was perfect around him, every minute of pining they’d ever shared transformed into flesh. His heart was bursting, he was close to tears and to top it all off he was going to come, extremely soon, he’d finish before Tony and it would all have been awful and –

But then Tony bit down on his shoulder and was coming across Steve’s stomach, groans tearing from his throat, and Steve was coming too with his hands tight around Tony’s hips.

“Fuck.” He swayed. His vision was blurred. He couldn’t remember how to breath.

“Yeah,” Tony whispered into his neck. Then he was up, pulling off Steve so fast that it must have hurt. “I’m gonna – I’m gonna get cleaned up.”

“Right,” said Steve, “wait, no – Tony.”

But Tony was already gone. Steve collapsed backwards on the bench with a sigh and stayed there, staring at the ceiling, long after his stomach had dried.

(then)

She heard the door open and didn’t turn round. The letters had started to blur together in front of Sharon’s eyes.

“It’s a digraph,” she said to whoever had entered.

“Bless you,” said Bobbi, pushing a coffee into her hands. “Any reason you’re working in a storage closet?”

“I like small spaces. Look – you put the entire alphabet down the x-and-y axis of a grid and you get six hundred and seventy six spaces, which you fill in with a number. Each pair of letters represents a number, but some are larger than others and there’s two squares for each combination, which is why the two strings of letters are different each time even though we’re sure they’re going to the same place – different ways of writing them.”

“All right.” Bobbi nestled into the sliver of space next to Sharon. “So they’re numbers. Co-ordinates?”

“Yep. Latitude and longitude. Problem is that they’re clearly using a scrambled alphabet. I thought it might be a Caesar code so I translated the alphabet one space 26 times but I’m still getting co-ordinates that make no sense, unless we think Killgrave took them to Australia which, who knows, maybe he did because he has the Scarlet Witch – “

“Deep breath.”

She paused. Breathed. “Thanks. Ok, so they’re scrambling it using a key, and I don’t have that key. I’ve tried all the most commonly used ones and turned up nothing, so now I’m having to run through every single possible variation of the alphabet, of which there are just over sixty-seven million.” She tipped her head back. “I’m wasting time we can’t afford, and I still can’t – I just – “

She pushed the useless laptop – still running through its combinations with a contented hum. She wanted to pick it up and beat it into the wall. She settled for slumping forward. There was a hand on her shoulder, rubbing in gentle circles. When was the last time someone had touched her like that? Just to comfort her?

“I read your file,” she said at last.

“And I read yours.” The hand didn’t slow down. “What happened to Dr Faustus?”

“He’s still in prison.”

“Good. The Phantom Rider is very much dead, by the way. I pushed him off a cliff.”

“I wish I’d done that.” She gripped her hair and pulled on it. The pain would keep her alert. “Maybe I’m too close to this. Mind control. Steve. I feel like I’ve just been running into walls.”

“There isn’t going to be a woman on earth who doesn’t feel too close to this.” Bobbi’s voice was gentle. “I choose to think it gives us strength.” 

“Strength.” Sharon tipped her head back. She meant to let it thunk against the wall. Meant to. But somehow it landed on Bobbi’s shoulder instead, and Bobbi’s hand was now stroking her hair. “You’ve seen the notes about my teenage eating disorder in the file. Do you know how it was cured?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t, not really. My great-aunt Peggy used to tell me stories about her time working for SHIELD. She helped set the whole thing up, did you know that?”

“I did.”

“Yes, she was wonderful.” Peggy’s soft hands and endless cups of rose-scented tea she imported from Chelsea. She’d been the only warmth in that chilly Virginian household. “My parents – they were pretty well off. They had this idea that I’d meet a nice boy in the same social circuit and settle down young, the same way they did. Summer with them in the Hamptons. Get real good at tennis. Do philanthropy instead of having a career.”

“I know the type.”

“And I wasn’t quite that type. So I suppose I decided to just – stop existing. Got hospitalised at one point, which is when Peggy came to visit me. And she told me that she thought I could be a SHIELD agent, that I had what it took. But she said I’d have to be strong.”

Bobbi’s hands were calloused from her escrima sticks. Sharon shut her eyes and let herself feel held. “She meant physically strong,” she continued. “She was trying to say that I needed to keep my weight up so I could turn it into muscle mass. But it always stuck with me – _be strong, be strong, be strong._ I don’t know if that’s why I’m so – so – I don’t know, cold?”

“You’re not cold,” said Bobbi. “Trust me, I know cold. You’re all heart, Carter.”

“Yeah, well. Tell that to my vibrant social life.”

They stayed there, listening as the computer worked through its combinations.

“Sorry for falling apart on you,” she said at last. She didn’t move her head from Bobbi’s shoulder.

“If you think this is falling apart, you haven’t fallen apart enough.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got too much shit to do.”

“Ain’t that the way.”

The cupboard felt a little like a womb, dark and warm. Up close, Bobbi’s scent was more complex – lemon and bergamot, with hints of something herbal and sharp underneath. Rosemary, maybe? Was this female friendship? She’d always thought of herself as a feminist, but it was undeniable that most of the closest relationships in her life had been with men. Even at her horrible all-girls prep school she’d been too smart, too chilly, too blonde and skinny and self-contained to be much of anything to anyone. That was the problem with being an ambitious girl – in a world where men were at the top, rising shoved you out of the company of other women. Maybe that was why Hill was the way she was.

“You’re thinking too much like a spy,” said Bobbi.

“Sorry?”

“About the code. Though also about, like, every aspect of your personal life. You’re hella strong and – “

“Bobbi. The code.”

“Right.” Bobbi’s eyes were fixed on the wall. “These aren’t highly trained SHIELD agents who could memories a twenty-six long random combination. They’re thugs. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Take out the repeats.”

Sharon was already reaching for the laptop, typing it in. “You’re right, that’s – nothing for that one.”

“Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow?”

“You’re full of surprises – ok, nothing for that one, keep it coming.”

“Pack my box with five dozen liqueur jugs.”

“Jesus Christ.” The laptop pinged. “We’ve got it! Location in the south Caribbean, four hours to the south-south-east. Morse, you’re – “

“A genius.” Bobbi was triumphant. “Yeah, I know. We ready to go?”

“Let me call everyone back in.” She was reaching for her communicator. Her exhaustion had evaporated now that she had a purpose. “Sam, can you hear me? You with the X-Men? Good, tell them to meet us at the port. Morse, is your serum ready?”

“I’ve fitted some non-lethal rounds to act as a delivery system.”

“Perfect, everyone catch that? Our first target is the Scarlet Witch – if we can take her out of Killgrave’s control, then the others should go down easier. Captain Marvel is unlikely to be punctured – don’t waste your time on her. The one problem is Quicksilver, so stay in teams of two with Sam in the air – “

“Quicksilver won’t be an issue,” said Bobbi.

“How’s that?”

“Well,” said Bobbi with a dry smirk. “I’m hoping I can persuade Clint to shoot him.”

“We’re working under the assumption that Hawkeye hasn’t been compromised?”

“As far as I can tell, Killgrave’s control is only activated by hearing his voice.”

“So?” said Sharon, then “Oh. Ohhhh.”

Clever Barton.

“Guys,” she said into the comm, unable to keep the smile out of her voice. “We’ve got a man on the inside.”

“Pietro,” he whispered into the darkness. “Pietro, I know you can’t answer me, and I wouldn’t be able to hear you anyway, but I need you to listen to me.”

The hands pinning his wrists didn’t move. Something wet landed on Clint’s face. Above him, Pietro was crying. The only thing Clint had had time to do before Steve’s hands reached him was rip out his hearing aids and crush them underfoot, but he was fiercely glad. He hadn’t been able to lip-read Killgrave’s monologue to Pietro when he’d walked into their dungeon with Wanda on his arm. The look on Pietro’s face had been enough.

How long could those arms hold him up? Best case scenario, Killgrave forgot about them long enough for Pietro’s strength to fail. He’d be too weak to follow Killgrave’s instructions, and Clint could push him off and go hunting.

“I know you’re scared,” he said. “And I don’t know what he told you. I know you think you’ve failed your sister. But you haven’t, ok? We’re here, and that’s the most important part. We found her. We found them. And people are looking for us, following our trail. Don’t be mad, but I told Nat where we were.”

He leant his head forward until it brushed Pietro’s chest, and tried desperately to summon up some hope. But there was nothing, nothing but that dark coiling anger that pulled him down into a place he’d sworn he’d never go again.

“We’re going to kill him,” he whispered. “I promise.”


End file.
